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AN APPEAL 



FROM THE I 

JUDGMENTS OF GREAT BRITAIN 

r 
RESPECTING THE 

/f .. 

PART FIRST, 

CONTAINING 

AN HISTORICAL OUTLINE 

OF THEIR •• 

! 

MERITS AND WRONGS AS COLONIES; '' 

\ 

AND '' 

[' 

STRICTURES UPON THE CALUMNIES OF THE BRITISH WRITER 

BY ROBERT WALSH, Jr. 1 



Quod quisque fecit, patitur : autorem scelus 
Repetit, sDoque piemitur exemplo nocens. 

SENEC, 



SECOND EDITION. 



PHILADELPHIA : 



?UBLISHED BY MITCHELL, AMES, AND WHITE. 
'William Brown, Printer. 



C ' '"' '' 



'Mem Distnct of Pennsylvania, to wit : 

BE IT REMEMBERED, That, on the twenty-third day of September, in 
; forty-fourth year of the Independence of the United States of America, 
D. 1819, Mtchell, Ames, and White, of the said District, have deposited in 
s office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as proprietors, in 
e words following, to wit : 

\n Appeal from the Judgments of Great Bi'Itain respecting the United States 
" of America. Part First, containing An Historical Outline of tlieir Merits and 
" Wrongs as Colonies ; and Strictures upon the Calumnies of the British 
" Writers. By Robert Walsh, Jr. Quod quisque fecit, patitur : autorem 
" scelus repetit, suoque premitur exemplo nocens. S nec." 

In conforraity to the act of the Congress of the United States, entitled *' An 
t for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, 
d books, to the auvhors and proprietors of such copies, during the times 
erein mentioned." — And also to the act, entitled, " An act supplementaiy to 
act, entitled ' An act for the encouragement of learning by securing the co- 
es of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, 
tring the times therein mentioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to this 
ts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints." 

D. CALDWELL, 
Clerk of the Eastern District of Pennsylvanfei^ 



/HH 



To ROBERT OLIVER, Esq, 

OF BALTIMORE. 

-ti 

Dear Sir, l 

This is a hasty volume, and its tenor may notn 
exactly in maison with your opinions and predilectioK 
I could, therefore, have wished to attach your name ratbi 
to its intended adjunct, which may have higher claims?! 
regard; but I am anxious to improve the first opporturr 
of bearing public testimony to a character, which an a 
quaintance of many years, has taught me to view as of fe] 
common worth and elevation. It is only a few mon j 
ago that your merits were commemorated in your nati 
land, in a strain which those inhabitants of your adope 
country, who know you well, cannot deem too lofty, \y 
hesitate to re-eclio. In proclaiming you public-spirits, 
open-hearted, and munificently hospitable, the distinguic 
ed assemblage in Dublin spoke as our experience wop 
have led us to speak. A remarkable strength of nat^i; 
abilities, maintained in full exertion by an active, vea; 
ment spirit, and the favour of fortune seconding a soid| 
judgment and steadfast faith in commercial dealings, hic 
put you in possession of an ample estate, to which you d; 
vindicate your title by a noble use of it in the oflScesu 
beneficence and friendship. u 



DEDICATION. 

[ have another object in addressing you thus in my 
)acity of author. It is, to witness — in opposition to 

false relations of British travellers — that the native 
lerican is not backward in recognizing and honouring 

estimable qualities and just pretensions of a fellow citi- 
1 of foreign birth. We make no distinctions and have 
reserved feelings, where respect and confidence are 
tractly due: if, blended and compoimded as we are, the 
e could be otherwise, it would not certainly be so in 
srence to Irishmen. With them, the process of as- 
lilation in all respects, is more easy and natural than 
h any other people. America owes them much. She 
mot but sympathize deeply in the wrongs they have 
fered at home. In the same nation in which tJiey have 
ays found a tyrannical mistress, she, throughout her 
3nial existence, found a jealous step-dame, and now 
Is a malevolent scold. 

I am, dear sir, 

truly and affectionately, 
your obedient servant, 

Robert Walsh, jk 

iULADELPHIA, Sept. 1819 



PREFACE 
OF THE AUTHOR. 



1. About the end of the month of January last, 1 
undertook to prepare for the press, a Survey of the insti 
tutions and resources of the American repubhc; and of thj 
real character and condition of the American people. }• 
work of this kind, wrought from authentic information 
appeared to me to constitute the best refutation of th^ 
slanders, which are incessantly heaped upon us bj 
British writers. In assuming the task, I expected to b( 
able to complete it in the course of the present sunnner 
artd accordingly set on foot such enquiries in the severa 
divisions of the Union, as the design prescribed. Aftei 
pursuing my first arrangements for a couple of months, ] 
discovered that I had not duly measured the delays inci 
dent to the collection of facts, over so extensive a surface 
and through the agency of gentlemen engrossed, for th{ 
most part, by professional affairs. Finding that I mus 
allow a longer term than was at first proposed, for the ac 
cumulation of materials, I fell upon the plan of making up 
in the interval, a preliminary volume, which should em 
brace a review of the dispositions and conduct of Grea 
Britain towards this country, from the earliest period 
and a collateral retaliation for her continued injustice anc 
mvective. 

What I now submit to the pubhc, is the fruit of the plai 
just mentioned. It is not offered as a digested book; bu 



VI PREFACE. 

as a series of Notes and Illustrations; and it could not be 
3ther, from the shortness of the time within which it has 
3een composed. The immediate object required, indeed, 
lothing more. I have to apologize rather for the bulk of the 
/olume, which exceeds my own expectation; and is owing 
.0 the impression under which I proceeded, that the quota- 
ions, instructive in themselves, and useful towards eluci- 
iation and proof, should not be curtailed for the sake of 
3conomizing a certain number of pages. As respects die- 
ion, I have aimed at clearness and signilicancy alone, 
tVhat has been instantly transferred from the desk to the 
)ress, must be liable to the reproach of diffusion and 
•oughness. It is not a model of style or of epitome that is 
vanting on such an occasion as the British writers have 
created, for the exertion of our faculties of literary de- 
ence; but an aggregation of facts pointedly told, and thet 
iroduction in detail of whatever tends to rectify perverse/i 
»r propagate just opinions. it 

My purpose in this undertaking generally, is not merely 
assert the merits of this calumniated country; I wish to 
epel actively, and, if possible, to arrest, the war which is 
vaged without stint or intermission, upon our national re- 
lUtation. This, it now appears to me, cannot be done 
i^ithout combating on the offensive; without making in- 
oads into the quaiters of the restless enemy. 

I had long indulged the hope, in common with those* 
imericans who were best affected to Great Britain, that 
he false and .contumelious language of the higher clas3«, 
t least, of her literary censors, would be corrected by 
he strong relief, in which our real condition and charac- 
er were daily placing themselves before the world. We 
xpected that another tone more conformable to truth and 
OLind policy would be adopted, when we had on our side.- 
he degree of notoriety as to those points, which usually 
verawes and represses any degree of assurance in the 
pirit of envy and arrogance. 

But the disappointment is complete for every American 
ilio has paid attention to the tenor of the late British 
writings and speeches, in which reference is made to these 



t RE FACE. Vlj 

United States. The Edinburgh and Q,uarterly Reviews 

have, vpithin the twelvemonth past, by the excesses oL 

obloquy into which they have given from the most unwor.i 

thy ajDprehensions, put beyond question the insufficiency 

of any amount of evidence, and of all the admitted laws o?. 

probability and reasoning, to work the reformation toi 

which I have alluded. i| 

It was, too, believed by many, that the British writers 

would assign some bounds to their attacks, as long as wt 

forbore to recriminate; and it was thought harsh and unt 

charitable to touch the sores and blotches of the Britisl 

nation, on account of the malevolence and folly of a fevi 

individuals, or of a party, within her bosom. The wholtl 

is proved to be mere illusion. There is no intemper 

ance of provocation, which could have excited more 

rancour, and led to fiercer and wider defamation, that 

we find in the two articles of the forty-first number o 

the (Quarterly Review, which treat of -American affairs 

The whig journals have begun to rail in the same strain 

the Opposition have joined, with the ministerial party, evei 

on the floor of parliament, in a hue and cry agains 

" American ambition and cruelty;" and in affecting to ere 

dit the coarse inventions of Englishmen who have eithe 

visited us for the express purpose of manufacturing libels 

or betaken themselves to this expedient on their returi 

home, as a profitable speculation. It is enough, that th* 

desire of emigrating to the United States should sprea« 

among the population of England, in an extent deemec 

invidious, or hurtful: that the territorial security of th 

Americans on one side should appear about being ren 

dered complete, with some possible danger to the stabilit 

of the British empire in the West Indies, to throw th 

British politicians of every rank and denomination, int 

paroxysms of despite and jealousy, and to enlist them in 

common scheme of misrepresentation which may inspir 

the British farmer and artisan with a horror of republi 

can America, and the nations of the world with a distrus 

of the spirit of her government. 

^We cannot defeat their purpose as far^s their countrj 



7mi PKEFACE- 

inen are concerned; but we may guard the better against 
)i:he effects of the hatred and contempt which they labour 
)to inculcate, by acquainting ourselves thoroughly with the 
true nature and scope of their designs. If we have, as I 
Verily believe, a band of implacable and indefatigable foes, 
en those who direct the public affairs, and mould the pub- 
iic mind, of Great Britain, we should be fully alive to 
liie fact, and alert in using the means in our power, of 
restraining the effusions of their malice. National an- 
i.ipathies are to be deprecated in themselves; to excite 
\hem wantonly, is an offence against humanity and re- 
igion; but we are not censurable, if they are produced 
(ncidentally, by the course which self-defence may require 
')f us to pursue. It is the English writer who becomes 
iloubly culpable, if his pertinacity in defaming the United 
States, be such as to leave to the American, whose right 
It is to check this as well a^ every other form of hostility, 
iio resource for the purpose, but the exhibition of what is 
)dious and despicable in the character, conduct, and com- 
))osition of the British nation. 

: There is much truth in the old maxim of the schools — 
•etorquere non est respondere: to retort is not to reply, 
•rhe present case forms an exception, however; for, the 
3ritish writers and orators never throw out their re- 
proaches against the United States, without putting Great 
Britain in glorious contrast; it is the excellence, the 
)urity, and the liberty, and the comfort, which they see 
kt home, that, they would fain have us believe, quicken 
heir sensibility, and embitter the expression of their hate, 
'0 the evils and abuses abounding on this side of the water. 
Phus, to expose their real spirit and aims, and to fortify 
he confidence in our relative merit, necessary to us in 
his struggle with systematic detraction, we are compelled 
investigate and set forth the misery and turpitude by 
vhich they are surrounded, and the wrongs and insults 
'>f which we have had constantly to complain. This is 
lot mere recrimination; it is resistance to degrading com- 
')arisons and injurious pretensions; we tear off one of the 
hany disguises which our enemies assume to facilitate 



PREFACE. n 

their project of bringing us into disrepute with manl 
kind. 

It is, certaijily, wretclied sophistry to argue, as they do 
from single instances of disorder and vice; and neither faiJ 
nor charitable to display only what is bad in a mixed system 
in which the good may greatly predominate. We wouh 
not be entitled to follow this example, but for the purpos< 
of repressing it, by shewing how severely Great Britaii 
may suffer in her turn from its adoption elsewhere. Upoi 
the principles of the logic which she has used against th( 
United States, she might be proved to be the most misera 
ble and wicked nation that has ever existed. The pub 
licity which she gives to all her domestic transactions an( 
circumstances; the discussion which her foreign policy 
and administration undergo, in and out of parhament, laj 
bare all her vulnerable points. Never before was such s 
mass of matei'ials prepared for the satirist of national vicei 
and distempers, as is to be found in the debates and re 
ports of her legislature, and in the innumerable chronicle; 
of her internal history, which, as we there have it, is bu 
a tissue of the grossest enormities and the most cruel dis 
tresses. 

In endeavouring to establish her invariable unkindnesi 
and injustice to this country, and her liability to reproacl 
in an indefinite degree beyond ourselves, on the ground: 
of disparagement which slie is never weary of repeating 
it is not to American writers and travellers, to obscure anc 
vulgar witnesses, labouring under the suspicion of nationa 
prejudice, personal pique, or habitual venality, that 1 shal 
have recourse; but to British authorities of the highesi 
standard; to British historians and legislators, and ever 
to the very journals, which serve as the spiracles throiigl" 
which the torrents of venom are incessantly spouted againsi 
the American people. Our accusers in Great Britair 
have built their charges u\-)on English testimony, and thai 
the least respectable of its kind. I shall be found, in im- 
peaching her in return, to use not suspicious foreign, but. 
in almost every instance, unquestionable British state- 
ments; not the allegations of General Fillet — quite as 

Vol. I.~B* 



% PREFACE, 

4'ustworthy as those of the Jansons and Fearons — but 
'he records of ParHament and the oracles of the British 
^mpire. Here, it cannot escape the reader, how much 
^ore dignified and warrantable the retaliation, than the 
'ttack ; and that, in repelling aggression with evidence 
ierived from these sources, we do not descend to the level 
f those who bespatter us with ordure amassed by natural 
r hired scavengers of their own blood and temper. 

" The libels of the present day," said Mr. Burke, in 
•\\s retort upon the Duke of Bedford, " are just of the 
ame stuff as the libels of the past. But they derive an 
hiportance from the rank of the persons from whom 
(ley come, and the gravity of the place where they are 
\ttered. In some way or other they ought to be noticed.^' 
We think and reason thus, in respect to the calumnies 
Vith which we have been lately assailed in Great Britain, 
ill that is accumulated, for instance, in the Edinburgh 
'.nd (Quarterly Reviews, in the articles which form the 
immediate provocation upon which I now write, is an old 
>;ompost of vile ingredients and impure leven, in itself 
mfit to be handled, and much more unfit to be imitated. 
Those journals, however, exert an unrivalled influence 
!»ver the British pubhc; they are not without considerable 
Authority on the continent of Europe, where they are 
Videly circulated; they have credit and sway with nuni- 
-)ers of readers, even in the United States: in the cata- 
logue of their authors and special patrons we find men ot 
;minence, both in letters and politics; some who have a 
Inaterial share in the public councils of their country, and 
tvhose writings, on other subjects than the aff^airs of Ame- 
Kca, possess a degree of excellen€e, which invests the 
Ijamphlets in question with a general character of great 
W^eight and value. 

I 2. I will pass from the instance of these Reviews to 
mother, worthy of particular observation, on many ac- 
counts; in which, alo, the merest, most hacknied ribaldry 
irespecting America, is rendered miportant and memora- 



PREFACE. X 

ble by *' the rank of the persons from whom it came, anj 
the gravity of the place where it was uttered." i j 

Westminster school is one of the principal semina' 
ries of classical education for the sons of the Britisl 
nobility and gentry; for those who are destined, eithe^ 
by birthright or custom, to become legislators and ri^i 
lers; to wield the national power, and give the tone t; 
national sentiment. It has been long the practice, in thai 
institution, to exhibit annually a Latin play, of which th(| 
characters are filled by the senior students, about to hi 
translated to one of the great universities. The performl 
ance is attended by a crowd of great personages — by mi 
nisters of state, dignitaries of the church, and patriciaii' 
families; and all the eclat is given to the occasion o; 
which we can suppose it susceptible A Latin prologut' 
and epilogue, serving as specimens of scholarship, usualb 
accompany the play. In an exhibition of the kind, whici 
took place about the conclusion of our late war with Grea' 
Britain, tlie subject chosen for the epilogue was emipa 
tion to the United States. It was treated in the form of 
colloquy between a person preparing to embark, and 
patriotic Englishman attempting to dissuade him from th 
adventure. Nothing can exceed the terseness of the lati 
nity, but the virulence of the abuse lavished upon America 
in this piece. Whatever the writings of the British tra 
vellers could furnish, that was most injurious and insula 
ing to the American people, is here elaborately condensed: 
and imbued with a new and more active venom. Th 
following is a translation of part of this classical lampoor 

"DAVUS TO GETA. 

"Whither do you propose to fly? Get. To Hesperia (America^ 
— Da. What! to that country which is beyond the ocean; a cour 
cry barbarous in itself and inhabited by Barbarians! In that cour 
try Geta, Astr-cca is not a virgin, but a virago : sometimes, as repoi 
goes, she is a drunkard, often a pugilist; sometimes even a thie 
Nor is it easy to say whether the tenor of their manners is more t 
be admired for simplicity or elegance : a negro wench, as we ar 
told, waits on her master at table in native nudity ; and a beau wi 
strip himself to the waist, that he may dance unincumbered, an 
with more agility. Do you love your glass, every hour brings wit! 

I 



11 PREFACE. 

: a fresh bumper. There you have the gum-tickler^ the fihlegm- 
utter, the gait-breaker.^ the antifogmatic. No man is a slave there, 
)r negroes are not considered as of the human species in America, 
ivery man thinks what he pleases, and does what he pleases. The 
oung men spurn the restraint of laws and of manners : his own 
iclination is there every man's suflPicient diploma. Brideivell and 
he stews supfily them wi'h senators, and their respectable chief jua- 
Ice is a ivorthless scouiidrel. Does a senatorial orator dexterously 
im to convince his antagonist? he spits plentifully in his face; 
nd that this species of rhetoric may be more efficacious, tobacco 
jrnishes an abundance of saliva for the purpose. The highest 
raise of a merchant is his skill in lying. Then their amusements I 
) gouge out an eye with the thumb, to skin the forehead, to bite 
ff" the nose! and to kill a man, is an admirable joke. Believe me, 
ieta, even if the black vessel of transportation you embark in, 
hould bear you safely to this elysium of yours, the very passage 
'^ould exhaust all your funds, and your whole life would be held in 
ledge, never to be redeemed : your destiny at last would be to 
ied the rats of a prison. But come, think better of this scheme 
'hile you have it in your power. Let the ruined inan, the impious 
>retch, the outlaw, praise America; if you are yet in your senses, 
Jeta, stay at home." 

The whole of the dialogue may be found in the Port 
^olio, into which it was copied in the year 1816, from 
iie English Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1815; to 
/hich magazine it was committed thus for circulation, 
iiree months after the signature of the treaty of peace and 
mity between Great Britain and the United States. The 
ble writer who introduced it into the American journal, 
ttached to it a commentary which equally deserves to be 
ead entire, and of which I adopt the following passages, 
s speaking what is due from me to the occasion. 

" Thus it is, that at an age when impressions are apt to take the 
trongest hold of the mind, — with the associations most calculated 
) give vividness and effect to the sentiments uttered — at the direc- 
on and under the superintendence of the reverend preceptors in 
le first school of classical education that Great Britain can boast — 
I the presence, and with the sanction of persons deemed highly 
jspectable for rank, learning, character, and station — the young 
)ns of the nobility and gentry of England arc taught to pronounce, 
iplaud, and give effect to, the most glaring and disgusting false- 
oods, and the most virulent and vulgar abuse against this country 
id its inhabitants universally. 



PREFACE. XU, 

"There is nothing- in the invectives of the Quarterly Reviev, 
more abusive and flagitious than this epilogue. I am no advocat* 
for keeping up national animosity, but I do not approve of the doc^' 
trine of non-resistance; nor do I feel the obligation upon Ameri 
cans of submitting lamely to the insult, when the persons vi'ho hayr 
descended to these aspersions are themselves liable to the retort 
Had this attack been the hasty effusion of a political partizan, oj 
the witty scurrility of a writer whose sarcastic talent furnishes hi^t 
daily bread, or had we been subjected even to the mistaken correc| 
tion of a well-meaning observer, it might have been passed over.| 
but this, the studied, deliberate composition of deep-rooted enmit); 
deserves no quarter. One style of reply to impartial and friendl;. 
reprehension; another to the sarcastic rancour of a 'proud and in; 
suiting foe.' | 

" It may be, as it seems to be, the intention in Great Britain, tji 
educate their youth in sentiments of the most sarcastic and rancoy 
©us hostility towards i\merica ; and I dare say, the attempt wif 
succeed; and I dare aver also, that it will be met, as it naturall 
must, by correspondent feelings on this side the water." 

3. We were not altogether ignorant^, in the Unite 
States, that much of the favour shown to us, since th 
commencement of the present century, by the whig parti, 
in parliament, and their connexions out of doors, arosf 
from the relation of a minority or opposition, in whic| 
thoy stood in the British government. Yet we believec 
that there was enough of real cordiality in their feeling; 
and of elevation in their sentiments, to prevent them, 2 
all times, from countenancing gross misrepresentations c 
our condition and character, and raising groundless ck 
mours against our political transactions and views; froi 
setting us in a false or invidious light, merely to embai 
rass and discredit the ministry, or to promote dome^ti 
ends, such as those of checking emigration, and countei 
acting extravagant plans of parliamentary reform. A 
attentive observation of the language concerning our a; 
fairs, held of late by the whig journals and the pai 
liamentary opposition, has convinced me that we wer' 
deceived in supposing they had not always acted, in reU; 
tion to this country, altogether from party feelings an 
aims, and would not readily sacrifice justice and trutl 
where it was concerned, to selfish considerations. 

There is but one interpretation to be put upon tb 



iv PREFACE. 

)iirse they have taken, in regard to the execution of 
mbrister and Arbuthnot, and the agreement between 
pain and the United States for the transfer of the Flo- 
das. It has been a system of exaggeration, not to say 
ander, designed to bring the ministry under the suspi- 
on of pusillanimity and supineness, and to recommend 
e assailants to the nation as the tiuer Britons; the more 
(irited assertors and anxious guardians of her honour 
id interests. This accomplished, it was immaterial what 
uds and ruinous strife, and what injustice to the United 
tates, might follow, if their clamoui's raised a ferment 
nong the British people, and thus forced the ministry to 
u'sue to extremity an unattainable redress, and frustrate 
fair and equitable arrangement. Rejuark the artificial 
ne and hyperbolical representation, so well, though not 
'imarily calculated to produce discord and aversion be- 
leen the two nations, — of leading members of the mi- 
)rity in both houses of parliament. 

Mr. Tierney (House of Commons, May 19th, 1819). 

" There was one foreign power to which he must direct the atten- 
)n of the house, with the same view as he had mentioned France 
■he meant America; — she was out of the pale of confederation; 
ith her we had a separate treaty of peace ; towards her ive had 
ng cast an eye of jealousy^ and it well became us to be prepared 
r the worst. Let the house consider only what had happened ia 
e last three months. Two British subjects had been executed by 
I American commander. There might be circumstances warrant- 
g his conduct, and justifying, according to the law of nations, 
e approbation which his government had expressed; but he (Mr, 
ierney) was old enough to remember the time when, had two Bri- 
sh subjects been executed by a foreign state in time of peace, this 
)untry would not have put up with it quite so tamely. He knew 
le subject was a sore one, and he did not wish to press it farther. 
" While the noble lord opposite was at congress, two German 
'inces could not have exchanged a few meadows without important 
{presses being despatched to him. But America owned no con- 
fess: because she was a long way off, ministers seemed to think 
lat danger could not be near, and she was accordingly allowed to 
,ke up a position on a vast continent, as injurious as possible to the 
)lonial returns of this country, putting them in imminent and un- 
sniable jeopardy. 
" l^t the house and the country reflect then, if it was not the 



PREFACE. X) 

duty of the government to do something to prepare the empire fo; 
possible mischiefs that might arise even from France and America.' 

Sir Robert Wilson (June 4th, 1819) — "America aspired toi 
much after her own aggrandizement. She had sent cominissionei-* 
to South America to inspire hope and energy there. She had esta- 
blished a strong force in Texas, the province next to Mexico. Ame 
rica would next demand Cuba." i 

Mr. M' Donald (4th June, 1819) — " Such an aggrandizemen't o, 
a powerful rival, as the acquisition of Florida, ought not to h\ 
passed over without a strict enquu'y into the cause of this most ex' 
traordinary and unprecedented proceeding," &c. 

And the Marquis of Lansdov/ne (in the House of Lords, Mai 
11th, 1819)— 

" Of all the events that could happen at this time, there was nc 
one which so deeply affected the commercial interests of Great Bri 
tain as the cession of the Floridas to the United States. The po^ 
session of those provinces would enable the Americans to annihilat 
the British trade in the West India seas; and give them an oppoi 
tunity of connecting themselves with the black governments thei 
in a manner that might prove essentially injurious to our interesit 
The cession should have been guarded against at the congress t 
Vienna. No one at Vienna conceived it necessary to make an 
provision that should have the effect of preventing the aggrandize 
ment of the United States. Hitherto there was a balance on vvhic 
this country used to rely for her security, and it was an essenti: 
part of this balance to prevent the Floridas from being ceded to th 
United States. The conduct of General Jackson in the exe cutio 
ofAmbrister and Arbuthnot was unjiaralleUd in the hintory o 
civilized nations. If at the time when Copenhagen was taken b 
the British troops, Lord Cathcart, who then commanded tht;n' 
found that several persons belonging to neutral countries had bet 
engaged in the defence of the place, and ordered thc;m to be exc 
cuted, on pretence that they had no right to take up arras agcin; 
Great Britain, would not that act have been a gross violation of th 
laws of nations."* 

It may be doubted whether any measures which coul 
have been taken at the Congress ot" Vienna to guar 
against the severance of Florida from Spain, would hav 
pi'oved effectual: but the idea of a concurrence of th 
members of that Congress in precautions against th 
aggrandizement of the United States, for the securiiy c 



* The language of the ministerial journals, concerning" General J:ickso 
bordered n the infuriate. Thus we read in the London Conner of M.u-c-h 2 
1819 " General Jackson has tlie most villainous ((<ok ever heiield , he is nev< 
leen to smile. T/ie hero ?> worthy of the people, and the people of the hero" 



:V1 PREFAt^E. 

Jreat Britain! has something of the marvellous, besides 
nplying an extraordinary sort of equity. We had not 
een called on to explain how oitr security might be 
ffected by her aggrandizement in the West Indies; or 
ow the balance on which we might have relied, was de- 
troyed by " the positions" she had " taken up," all over 
le world; positions commanding every sea of commer- 
ial importance; — Heliogoland; Malta, in addition to Gib- 
iltar; the Isle of France; the Island of Ceylon; the Prince 
f Wales' Island; New South Whales; the Cape of Good 
[ope. " Our noble station at the Cape of Good Hope," 
lys a late London paper, " commands the commerce of 
le globe; it is the natural key to India; the bridle of 
Imerica; the surface which we might people with hardy 
Inglishmen is upwards of 100,000 square miles. Make 
le Cape a free port for the nations of Europe, and ice 
inish JVorth America from the Indian seas.'"' The 
Dwers of the Continent may smile when they find Great 
ritain, while herself adding constantly new kingdoms to 
er dominions in the East, and grasping at every mari- 
me station of consequence in the four quarters of the 
lobe, exclaiming against American ambition and aggran- 
izement, because the United States had acquired a con- 
^uous province, from which, if in foreign hands, they 
lUSt be subject to the severest annoyance, — by fair nego- 
ation, and the relinquishment of large pecuniary claims^ 
id well-founded pretensions to territory of much greater 
itent and intrinsic value. 

The American government and people are as little 
iely "to demand the Island of Cuba," as they are "to 
)nnect themselves with the black governments of the 
lest Indies." They want no slave islands; and to insti- 
ite the blacks of Hayti to foment and protect insurrec- 
3n in the British islands (for this must be meant by the 
[arquis of Lansdowne,) is an atrocity of which they must 
^er be incapable, though Great Britain, in her next war 
ith us, should repeat the example which she has 
k'ice given, of exciting the negroes of the southern 
ates to supplant and butcher their masters. The case 



PREFACE. KVH 

which the British Peer selected to illustrate the justness 
of his sentence upon general Jackson, is every way ao 
unfortunate one for the purpose. His lordship and all 
his colleagues of the Opposition had denounced the attack 
upon Copenhagen as a heinous aggression; to be pai 
ralleled in treachery and outrage, only by Bonaparte's 
invasion of Spain. What parity of reason, then, in th^ 
supposed case of lord Cathcart putting to death the 
strangers whom he might have found assisting in the de^ 
fence of the capital of a civilized power, a member of the 
European Christian commonwealth, so unexpectedly and 
iniquitously attacked; and that of the American general 
pursuing a savage horde into an adjacent territory, from* 
which it had issued to desolate the American frontier,^ 
and there executing two European adventurers, proved' 
to be its instigators and accomplices? As the Danes 
did not follow the practice of massacreing their pri- 
soners, the strangers who might have identified them- 
selves with them, would not, when seized, have been 
subject to the punishment of death by retaliation, as 
were the alhes of the Seminoles, even under the Euro- 
pean law of nations. If the custom of Europe be deter- 
minative of that law in any particular, it may be confi- 
dently invoked in favour of the execution of Arbuthnol 
and Ambristier, on the supposition that they were actually 
leagued with the Indians, as the British ministry have ad- 
mitted; for, during the great wars of the Germans and; 
Poles against the Turks, death was the immediate loi 
of the European christian found acting on the side ol 
the infidels. So, there has never been the least hesita-i 
tion in the Mediterranean waters and territories, about 
despatching at once the renegade, no matter of what 
christian country, taken in arms on board a Barbary cor- 
sair, or in a predatory descent upon the coast. 

I find it difficult to reconcile the full knowledge which 
the Marquis of Lansdowne must possess of the history ol 
the British empire in India, and in Ireland, with his de- 
claration, that " the conduct of the American general wae 
unparalleled in the history of civilized nations. "^ This de- 

Vol. I.— C* 



SVlll PREFACE. 

claratiou, I deem the more remarkable, as it was only 
two months before (March 3, 1819,) that, on the occasion 
of the vote of thanks moved to Lord Hastings and the 
British generals in India, the Marquis of Lansdowne 
made, in ilie House of Lords, the following statement, in- 
cluding, as will be seen, a case of at least as criminal an 
aspect as that of the American general. 

The Marquis of Lansdowne said : " He felt it his duty to observe',' 
that there appeared on the face of the papers before their lord^^ 
ships, a transaction which could not be passed over in silence — a 
transaction which must be made the subject of some expression of 
censure, if thanks were to be generally voted to the whole army of 
tndia. — The transaction to which he alluded, was the execution of 
the Killedar of the fort of Talneir. It appeared, that after a vigor- 
ous resistance made by the fort, this commander had come out and 
surrendered. The garrison left in the fort, however, resisted. The 
Fort was then attacked by the British army, and taken ; and the 
tvhole of the garrison was put to the sword. However much he 
might regret such a proceeding, he did not make it the subject of 
complaint. Perhaps, under the circumstances of the case, it was 
unavoidable ; but what must be their lordship's opinion of the 
transaction that followed. The Killedar, who had remained in the 
possession of the British commander, was deliberately put to death. 
[t was impossible to leave this horrible circumstance out of view in 
any vote of thanks which their lordships should give. The des- 
patch of Sir Thomas Hislop states, that whether the Killedar was 
accessory to the treachery of the garrison or not, he was justly 
punished with death on account of his rebellion in the first instance. 
There was no ground for concluding that this unfortunate com- 
mander had any concert with the garrison in their treachery ; but, 
according to every rule of European war, some proof of that con- 
cert ought to have been exhibited, before the right of punishing 
him was assumed. As to the assertion, that he was guilty of re- 
bellion in holding out after his master had submitted and conclud- 
ed a treaty of peace, that was an offence over which a British autho- 
rity could have no legal cognizance. He was accountable for his 
rebellion to Holkar only. But how was he to know that he was in 
rebellion ? How was he apprised of the conclusion of the treaty ? 
He had no information of it but through the report of the British 
army. Would their lordships say that upon information received 
From an enemy the commander of a fortress was bound to surren- 
der, or even to discontinue hostilities, and that he was liable to the 
punishment of death if he refused ? If, indeed, he had been a party 
to the treachery of the garrison, he might have been, for that act, 
liable to punishment, after an inquiry before a regular military tri- 



PREFACE. acht 

bvmal ; but with the other charge of rebellion the British com- 
mander could have nothing to do." 

I am particularly struck with another example of 
disingenuousness and exaggeration on the part of our 
friends of the opposition, which I have now before me ill) 
a speech of Earl Grey, at the New Castle Fox dinner of 
the 31st. of December, 1818. This nobleman stands, 
with Lord Grenvilie, at the head of the old whigs; he 
was trained by the side of Fox, and deserved to be called ' 
the Diomed of the band who waged so powerful a war 
in the House of Commons under that leader. His zeal.j 
for parliamentary reform even surpassed that of his coK ^ 
leagues; but, on his ascension to the House of Lords, his 
feelings and views on this subject underwent a material 
change; although he still continued inseparable in others 
questions from his first associations, and, in his American 
politics, ranked with the most strenuous antagonists of^ 
the ministerial system. As the imagination of a large 
proportion of the British politicians has been particularly 
affected with the extensive emigrations, that of his lord- 
ship is disturbed in an especial manner, with the cry for 
universal suffrage and annual parliaments; and he proba- 
bly feels the more anxious to discredit these innovations, 
from having himself taken the lead in the House of Com- 
mons in arraigning the constitution of the British legisla- 
ture. The example of America, as to the point of re- 
presentation, seemed naturally to interfere with his object, 
and was therefore to be invalidated, not merely by being i 
shown to have no application to the circumstances of'' 
Great Britain, but by being exhibited as of a most malig- 
nant and revolting character in itself To this design I 
ascribe the use which he made, on the occasion above 
mentioned, of Fearon's " Sketches of America,^^ and the 
character which he gave of the book and its author. I 
shall make the case better understood by transcribing 
that portion of the speech to which I allude, before I give, 
as I intend, some glimpses of the true light in which the 
Sketches are to be viewed, and must l>ave been viewed. 



XX FREFACE- 

in fad, by the noble Earl. After drawing a frightful pic- 
ture of the state of England, he proceeded thus: 

" But there is even a ynore dreadful instance than ours to be 
found in the history of a country whose popular constitution must 
furnish matter of much interesting observation to every lover of 
freedom. The constitution of America is free and popular in the 
largest sense. Now, what is the case in America? A gentlemati 
was deputed by thirty-nine families, who had been driven by the 
necessities of the times to think of emigration — a melancholy proof 
of our present condition. On his report they were to depend, for the 
spirit of the country, and on the inducements it might hold out to 
them. The gentleman's name is Fearon. He has published the 
report which he made to these persons, and his hook is full of the 
most valuable information^ and is distinguished by the marks not 
only of an inquiring^ observing^ and intelligent inind^ but of the 
greatest fairness and impartiality . What does Mr. Fearon say of 
the operation of their laws and of this boasted constitution?^' 

His lordship then adduced, as decisive revelation, what 
Fearon has written concerning the process of election and 
the distribution of offices in America; and concluded 
in these words — " This is Mr Fearon's statement, and I 
should observe to you, that he is by no means a willing wit- 
ness on the subject. Why do I repeat these things.^ Is it 
that I may depreciate the value of popular rights in your 
estimation? Far from it; I wish merely to show you 
that, under a system which may appear more perfect, 
similar, or even greater abuses^ may still exist than in 
England." 

We must conclude that the orator had actually read the 
work on which and its author, he pronounced so lofty a 
panegyric; which he thus held out to the world as tlie 
source of the most authentic information concerning Ame- 
rican affairs. He has, in fact, by the latitude and em- 
phasis of his recommendation, become the sponsor of the 
whole. It is a serious accountability; and I must confess 
that I am surprised at the boldness of the proceeding. 

In the first place, as to the point of our elections and 
the distribution of public trusts, Fearon's allegations are 
confined to the affairs of two states only, New York and 
Pennsylvania, and the choice of one federal officer, the 



PREFACE. XS 

&hief magistrate. It happens that those are precisel; 
and notoriously the parts of the Union, in which th 
game of state pohtics, a comparatively insignificant one 
bears the worst character and appearance. In them 
there is more perhaps, of what, as long as human natur 
is not perfect with us, must exist in a certain measure, ii 
the rest, — I mean paltry intrigue for petty offices, and in 
terested effort to influence votes. Cases of some enoi 
mity may occur in the first line of abuse, and suffrages b 
sometimes given from mere party subserviency; but it 1 
as absurd to compare what happens here in these respects 
with what prevails in England,' as it would be to compar 
the amount and description of the mendicit) in our streets 
or of the criminal delinquency on our calendars, with thos 
of which we read in Oolquhoun's Treatises and the lat 
Parliamentary Reports. 

Whoever talks of a degree of bribery and corruptio 
and undue influence in America, like that of the neighboui 
hood of the treasury in London, and the theatres of Englis 
suffrage, whether the shires or boroughs, ueals in the mos 
extravagant hyperbole. Fearon only repeats on this sut 
ject, what he pretends to have heard from two persons ( 
his own country, Mr. Cobbett and Mr. Hulme, both c 
whom, be it remarked, peremptorily disclaim the languag 
which he imputes to them, and accuse him of an impudei 
imposture. lie juight, perhaps, have read it in some of th 
wild declamations, which are published among us durin 
the heat of a contested election, and from the exaggera 
ing spirit of party recrimination. But, nothing that hi 
ever happened in this country, furnishes the least four 
dation for asserting broadly, that votes and places ar 
bought and sold. Throughout the states, the ri^lit of su 
frage is exercised, in general, with independen<.e an 
integrity, by freeholders jealous of their prerogative 
strangers to the want and very idea of a lar&;ess and to 
proud to submit to any dictatioii. The elec;tions m Nei 
England, for instance, are marked by a strictness of d( 
corum, probity of spirit, and universal intelligence ( 
action, such, as an European, accustomed to view th 



atU PREFACE. 

leople every wliere as jiopulace, would not be capable df 
iiiagiuing.* 

On this subject, moreover, it is not what may be done 
Y said in some of the large cities on the Atlantic coast, 
liat furnishes a test of the practice among the mass of this 
lation. 

With respect to disorder and corruption in the system 
f voting and appointing to office, under the general go- 
ernment, the oracle of Lord Grey says no more, from 
imself, than that "he became acquainted with facts in 
Vashington which no man could have induced him to 
elieve without personal observation." With more than 
ommon discretion, he abstains from telling what those 
lets are, but proceeds to give an account of what he 
[lere heard respecting the *' appointment" of the presi- 
ent by the caucus of congress, which he represents, in- 
eed, as a mandate issued to the electors in the different 
tates, and never disobeyed. But Lord Grey could not 
ave been so ignorant of the letter and whole analogy of 
ur institutions, as to have understood this to be more, in 
)rm or fact, than a recommendation from a certain num- 
er of members of congress assembled extra-officially, to 
le people at large, to vote for a particular individual as 
leir chief magistrate. The proceeding is, certainly, an 
•regularity, and unsafe as a precedent; yet, so far, it can- 
ot be said, to have been of practical injury, or of any real 



* "I have lived long in New England," said Dr. Dwight, the late distin- 
jished president of Yale College, "and have never yet known a single shilling 
ven to purchase a vote." This is the testimony of one than whom no person 
)iild have had better opportunities of knowledge. He describes thus the 
aniier of a New England election. 

•' In New England, on the morning of an election day, the electors assemble 
thcr in a church or a town house, in the centre of the township, of whicli 
ley are inhabitants. , j 

"The business of the day is sometimes introduced by a sermon, and very r^ 
'ten by public prayer. A moderator is chosen : the votes are given in with 
riot decency ; without a single debate ; without noise, or disorder, or drink ; 
id with not a little of the sobriety, seen in religious assemblies. The meeting , . i, 
■ then dissolved ; the inhabitants return quietly to their homes, and have .,j 
jiither battles nor disputes. I do not believe that a aingle -woman, bond or free, ,-, 
\<er appeared at an election in JN'Vio England since, the colonization of the coun- 
|y. It would be as much as her character was worth." 

Rephj to tJie Quarterly Jievieivers, 1815. 



PREFACE. X±ii 



significance. I believe it is not doubted by any one, bui'i 
that the personages who have been elected in rotatioijj 
to the otfice of president, and particularly the one w'>J' 
now fills it, would have succeeded equally with the people, 
without the forward counsel of such an assembly; arid. 
it seems to me, no less certain, that it is not in the power 
of any cabal of whatever composition, to impose any man 
upon the people as their chief magistrate; to effect thes 
adoption of one to whom the preference would not b^ 
given spontaneously.* 

On the whole, all that is found in Fearon's book, touch- 
ing these matters, does not, when candidly examined, im- 
plicate in general, " the laws and boasted constitution" of 
America; for, there is nothing that calls in question the 
conformity of the representation in congress, with the 
theory of those laws and that constitution. The " case inj 
America" admitted of application to the project of par- 
liamentary reform in England, only so far as it could be 
shewn, that the right of suffrage was not exercised honest- 
ly and independently in the election of congress; that this 
body was not free from corrupt deahngs towards the peo- 
ple and within itself; and did not fully and fairly represent 
the nation. No accusations of the kind are hazarded by 
Fearon, and I am sure that whosoever might utter, would 
find it impossible to sustain them, in the opinion of im- 
partial minds. 

It may be worth while to obtain an idea of the ge*- 
neral doctrines, concerning this country, of the book to 
which Earl Grey has so formally put his authoritative 
seal. I take at random, by way of specimen of that 



* "We kno-w," say the Edinburcfh Reviewers, in tlieir number for Decem- 
ber, 1818, (article on Universal Suftrage,) *' that the leaders of the dennocratid 
party who now predominate in their caucus or committee at Washington, do,' 
in effect, nominate to all the important offices inJVorih Jlmerica." It is inconceiv- 
able how such an assertion as this, could have been risqued in a publication 
hkely to find its way into the United States. I scarcely need add that no one 
in this country ever before heard of a standing committee of the kind; and 
that no such nomination tukes place, beyond the occasional recommendation 
to the president, by members of congress, or others, in their individual capaci- 
ty, of persons who are soliciting ofticcs, or on whom it is tlipught desirable that 
they should be conferred. 



Xxiv PREFACE. 

jf^most valuable information of which it is h\]\" the foi- 
,(owiug passages. 

) " No species of correction is allowed in the American schools; 
children even at home are perfectly independent, (p. 39.) A cold, 
lUniform bigotry seems to pervade all religious sects, (p. 48,) Clean- 
liness is scarcely knovi^n on this side of the Atlantic, (p. 80.) The 
tradesmen here (Philadelphia) are less intelligent than men follow- 
ling the like occupations in England, (p. 161.) The Americans are 
most remarkable for complete and general coldness of character 
and disposition — a cold-blooded callousness of disposition, (p. 166.) 
'Whatever degree of religious intelligence exists is confined to the 
clergy, (p. 167.) The colour of the young females of Philadel- 
(phia is produced by art: the junior branches of the Soci-ty of 
Friends there, are not at all deficient in the practice of rougeing. 
(p. 168.) The dirk is the inseparable companion of all classes in 
the state of Illinois, (p 262.) — The United States are cursed with a 
fiofiulution undeserving of their exuberant soil and free government. 
(p. 273.) The American lawyers are at least thirty-ihree and a 
third per cent, lower than their brethren in England, (p. 317.) The 
Americans, neglecting to encourage any pursuits, either indivi- 
dually or collectively, which may be called mental., they appear, as 
a nation, to have sunk into habits of indolence and indifference: 
they are neither lively in their tempers nor generous in their dispo- 
sitions, &c.* (p. 362.) We do not meet in America with even an 
approach to simplicity and honesty of mind. (p. 363.) The nation 
at large dislike England, and yet, both individually and collectively, 
would be offended, should a hint be expressed that they were of 
Irish or of Dutch, and not of English descent, (p. 368.) No peo- 
ple are so vain as the Americans ; their self-estimation and cool- 
headed bombast, when speaking of themselves or of their country, 
are quite ludicrous, (p. 368.) Every man in America thinks he 
has arrived at perfection, (p. 368.) Every American considers that 
it is impossible for a foreigner to teach him any thing, and that his 
head contains a perfect encyclopaedia, (p. 369.) A non-intercourse 
act seems to have passed against the sciences, morals^ and literature, 
in America, (p. 371.) The sexes seem ranked as distinct races of 
beings, between whom social converse is rarely to be held. A uni- 
versal neglect of either mental or domestic knowledge appears to 
exist among the females here, as compared with those of England, 
(p. 377.) Such is the habitual indolence of the American people^ 
and their indifference with regard to public affairs, that occurrences 



* So Lieutenant Hall, in his book of Travels in America, says, " The Ame- 
ricans are habitually serious and silent; tlieir spirits are seldom elevated!!" 
Apathy, taciturnity, are traits which we did not suspect to exist in our cha 
racter. 



PREFACE. Xxjl 

fjl 
. ! first, rale importance arc known but by few individuals, (p. 385f 'j 
There would appear to be placed in the very stamina of the peopI|'| 
a coldness, a selfishness, and a spirit of conceit, which form stronjjj 
barriers against improvement." (p. 391.) li 

Every particular assertion in this medley is in tllj 
nature of antiphrasis: and the general allegations aij; 
slanderous. The extravasance of several of them b|' 
Irays not only a libellous disposition, but an utter wa]| 
of JLidgtuent, in the writer. I will illustrate further " tha 
fairness and impartiality/^ which Earl Grey ascribes t< 
him in the superlative degree. He states (p. 46,) that u 
New Yoi'k all the churches (forty-five in number,) ar< 
xvell filled on the Sunday. The fact being rather credita 
ble to that community, it was necessary to give it another 
direction; and this is done by the following arbitary 
ridiculous, and malevolent interpretation. " The grea 
proportion of attendants at any particular church appea: 
to select it, cither because they are acquainted with th( 
preacher, or that it is frequented by fashionable compa 
ny, or their great-grandmoiher ivent there before the revo 
liiiion, or because their interests will be promoted b) 
so doing." We are not told the particular indication oi 
circumstance by which this appeared. Wherever the re- 
ligious worship and spirit of this country are brough 
into view, it is in the same strain that they are celebrated 
and ignorance of the scriptures is perpetualy charged 
upon the whole body of a people by whom the bible is 
doubtless, more generally possessed and read, in family 
than by any other on earth.* 

Our traveller, when he cannot venture to affirm ar 
opprobious fact, "as of his own knowledge, has recours( 
this form of speech, "[have reason to believe" — z 
convenient mode of columniating, when, as uniforml} 
happens with him, the reason, is not assigned. Thus 
he says (p. 171,) in relation to Philadelphia, — acity ai 
remarkable for domestic neatness, order, morality, an( 



* It is used in all the schools in tlie interior, ar.d these receive nearly ever 
:-,ative white. 

Vol. I.— D^ 



:XXV11I PHEFACJS. 

■ qlothes, if rags deserve that denomination, actually perfumed tjae 
I ir. Some were without shirts, others had this article of dress, bji.t 

f a quality as coarse as the worst packing cloth. I enquired of 
'Peveral if they could speak English. They smiled, and gabbled, 
[i'No Engly, no Engly,— one Engly talk ship.' The deck was filthy. 
^♦.""he cooking, washing, and necessary department, were close toge- 

lier. Such is the viercenarij barbarity of the Aviericaiis toho are 
^'^ ngaged in this trade, that they crammed into one of those vessels 
O'OO passengers, 80 of whom died on the passage." 
0' 

j£ This account is quoted with evident satisfaction, in the 
c Quarterly Review, for May, 1819, and the reviewer adds 

rem himself — "The infamous traffic is confined, ex- 
pplusively, to American vessels." 

^ I have thought it worth while to ascertain the facts oi 
^r;he case, and they are as follows: — The brig Bubona in 

^luestion was a British vessel, from Sunderland^ in Eng- , 
r^and; she was British property, and navigated on Britisli 
!jiccount; her crew was British, and her captain an Eng- 
Jishman, by the name of William Garterell. On arriving 
l^n the port of Philadelphia, he selected as his factors, the 
jjiVIessrs. Odlin and Co. merchants of that city, whom 
r(Fearon falsely represents as thp oimers of the vessel. 
'^The captain was not " tall," but about the middle size. 
^,or rather below it, and his countenance had an open, 
3jagreeable expression. What is more: of the vessels 
j.that entered the port of Philadelphia in the years 1816, 
r,and 1817, laden with redemptioners from the continent 
^,of Europe, the greater number was foreign; these 
3. amounted to ten, of which five were Btitish in British 
j,employment; namely, th^brig Bubona, above mentioned: 

the ship Zenophon, captain Goodwin; the brig Constantia, 
J captain Janson; the brig Wilham, captain Arrowsmitb, 
^and brig William, captain Danton.* The condition of 
jj the redemptioners on board the British vessels was no bet- 
yter than in the others of whatever nation, engaged in the 
fl " infamous traffic." 

I derive these particulars from unquestionable sources: 

nf ' ■ "^ 

ii * The othev foreign vessels (Prussian and Hanseatic) were, ship Vrow Ca- 
thrina, captain Jolin Van i!yle; brig Bonifacias, captain Leilman ; brig'Go'-'i- 
U cordia, captain Diedricksen; ship Vrow Elizabeth, captain Blankman, ^c 



4 



PREFACE. XXI 

— the Mr, Woodbridge Odlin, who transacted the bus 
ness of the Bubona; and Mr. Andrew Leinau, a respect: 
ble inhabitant of Philadelphia, who served as gener 
agent for the foreign redemptioner ships, as they wei 
styled, and who has in his hands official vouchers, whic 
I have examined, of theii* respective national characte 
the number of their passengers, &c. It is known, mor 
over, that as soon as the abuses practised in the trat 
became notorious, the American Congress passed a la 
designed to prevent the recurrence of them, and remai'j 
able for the humanity and efficaciousness of its precai 
lions. 

If Fearon really visited the Bubona, which may \ 
doubted, he, an Englishman, could not have mistake 
her national character, nor that of the captain. Th 
•' tall American, with an eye flashing Algerine cruelt 
is a phantasm manifestly intended to heighten the inju 
ous effect of the whole malignant fiction. So the use 
the present tense by the (Quarterly Reviewers, in the 
unwarrantable assertion, argues the design of giving 
to be understood, that the trade is still carried on I 
American vessels, with the same abuses as existed befo: 
the passage of the preventive law. 

Whether Earl Grey has found " the greatest fairne, 
and impartijility'^ in the article of the Quarterly Review 
on Fearon's Sketches, as well as in the btter, I know no 
but it is certain that the noble lord and the reviewer di 
fer much in their views of the character of the travelle 
-'We find , Mr. Fearon," says the reviewer, "whenev* 
England is concerned, venting his ignorant sneers, or ii 
dulging his spiteiul calumnies, at the expense of decent 
and tnith: lie crouches with base servility before Cobbc 
he grossly libels his fair countrywomen; he is solicitous 
entice the poor ofEui'ope from their country, by fallaci* 
and fe; he has greedily seized upon every opportunity < 
traducing the best and bravest officers of England; h 
prejudices are rooted in the profoundest ignorance; I 
deals in flippant and frequent abuse of scripture; he is ev 
ciently a man of verv limited faculties: he is in a state < 



:X PREFACE. 

Tpetual childhood; his total want of knowledge is suili- 
ently apparent, &c." It is a witness thus blackened, 
ighted, and stultified by themselves, and whom in fact, 
ey convict, in their examination of his book, of gross in- 
nsistency and prevarication, that the master critics of 
Dadon bring forward to explode the pretensions of the 
nited States to any degree of moral worth, intellectual 
^nity, or physical comfort. It is upon his testimony, 
ivho violates truth and decency, ivhenever England is 
ncerned,'^ they affect to believe, and would have the 
)rld believe, besides what I have quoted from him, 
id a multitude of other general imputations and parti- 
ilar calumnies, that — "the churches in America are 
led by fanatics, hypocrites, and buffoons;" that '"gain 
the education, the morals, the politics, the theology, 
d stands instead of the domestic comfort of all ages and 
isses of Americans ;" that " the worst degree of corrup- 
in which the inventive malice of the worst Jacobin ever 
larged upon the government of England, is more thaii 
alized at the American capital;" that "every election 
America,, from the president downwards, is carried on 
bribery, corruption, and intrigue."* 
I cannot refrain, in dismissing Mr. Fearon and his 
mpurgators, from offering to my American reader, 
me random testimony concerning the nature of those 
uses in the system of British suffrage and representa- 
)n, greater than which Lord Grey is pleased to believe, 
ly, or do exist under that of the United States. 
In the year 1793, the honourable Mr. Grey, then a 
ember of the House of Commons, — now Earl Grey, 
d a member of the House of Peers — made a motion in 
e Commons, for a reform in parliament, grounded upon 
5etition which he presented, and vehemently supported, 
d was understood to have himself composed. The 
(lowing quotations are parts of that petition, and the 

' The Edinburgh Reviewers have also so far forgotten their station, as to 
itow on Fearon, the epithets " enVis:htened and intelligent," and to recom- 
nd his book, with the simple reservation that he is " a /itile given to exaggc- 
ion in his views of vices and prejudices." See their 61st number. 



PREFACE. XX: 



facts stated in them, which did not admit of denial ai 
equally true of the subject of the present day. 



I 



" Your petitioners complain, that the elective franchise is *$ 
partially and unequally distributed, and is in so many instanci 
committed to bodies of men of such very limited numbei's; that tl 
majority of your honourable House, is elected by less than fiftee 
thousand electors, which even if the male adults in the kingdo 
be estimated at so low a number as three millions, is hot more the 
the two hundredth part of the people to be represented. 

',' The second, complaint of your petitioners, is founded on 
unequal proportions in which the elective franchise is distribute 
and in support of it, 

" They affirm, that seventy of your honourable members are r 
turned by thirty-five places, where the right of voting is vested : 
burghage and other tenures of a similar description, and in which 
would be to trifle with the patience of your honourable House, 
mention any number of voters whatever, the elections at the plact 
alluded to being notoriously a mere matter of form. And this yo\ 
petitioners are ready to prove. 

" They affirm, that in addition to the seventy honourable men 
bers so chosen, ninety more of your honourable members are elec 
ed by forty-six places, in none of which the number of vote 
exceeds fifty. And this your petitioners are ready to prove. 

" They affirm, that in addition to the hundred and sixty so eiflc 
ed, thirty-seven more of your honourable members are elected 
nineteen places, in none of which the number of voters exceeds 
hundred. And this your petitioners are ready to prove. 

" They affirm, that in addition to the hundred and ninety-sevei 
honourable members so chosen, fifty-two more are returned i 
serve in Parliament by twenty-six places, in none of which tf 
number of voters exceeds two hundred. And this your petitionei 
are ready to prove. 

" They affirm, that in addition to tv/o hundred and forty-nine s 
elected, twenty more are returned to serve in Parliament for coui 
ties in Scotland, by less than one hundred electors each, and te 
for counties in Scotland by less than two hundred and fifty eac) 
And this your petitioners are rcaxly to prove, even admitting th 
validity of fictitious votes. 

.*' They affirm, that in addition to the two hundred and seventj 
nine so elected, thirteen districts of burghs of Scotland, not coi 
taining one hundred voters each, and two districts of burghs, nc 
containing one hundred and twenty-five each, return fifteen mor 
honourable members. And this your petitioners are ready t 
pi'ove. And in this manner, according to the present state of you 
representation, two hundred and ninety-four of your honourabl 
raemb("rs are chosen, and being a majority of the entire House < 



1; 



SXii I'REFACE, 

ommons, are enabled to decide ail questions i. 
hole people of England and Scotland. 

"Religious opinions create an incapacity to vote. All Papists" 
e excluded generally, and, by the operation of the test laws, Pro- 
stant dissenters are deprived of a voice in the election of repi'c- 
mtativcs in about thirty boroughs, where the right of voting is' 
mfined to corporate officers alone ; a deprivation the more unjus- 
iable, because, though considered as unwovlhy to vote, they are 
;emed capable of being elected, and may be the representatives of 
e very places from which they are disqualified from being the 
ectors. . 

" A man paying taxes to any amount, how great soever, for his 
jmestic establishment, docs not thereby obtain a right to vote, un- 
ss his residence be in some borough where that right is vested in 
e inhabitants. This exception operates in sixty places, of which 
/enty-eight do not contain three hundred voters each, and the 
amber of liouseholders in England and Wales (exclusive of Scot- 
nd,) who pay all taxes, is 714,911, and of householders who pat 
1 taxes but the house and v/indow taxes, is 284.,459, as appears by , 
return iiiade to your honourable House in 1785. 
" In Scotland, the grievance arising from the nature of the rights 
'voting, has a different and still more intolerant operation. In that 
reat raid populous division of the kingdom, not only the great mass 
"th'j householders, but of the landholders also, arc excluded from 
1 participation in the choice of representatives. 
" Yottr honourable House knows, that the complicated rights of 
)ting, and the shameful practices which disgrace election pro- 
ledings, have so loaded your table with petitions for judgment and 
•dress, that one half of the usual duration of a parliament has 
arcely been sufficient to settle who is entitled to sit for the other 
ilf. 

" From the peculiar rights of voting, by which certain places re- 
rn members to serve in parliaments, eighty-four individuals do, 
,' their own immediate authority, send one hvmdred and fifty-seven 
:' your honourable members to Parliament, and your petitioners 
•e ready to name the members and the patrons. 
" Your petitioners are convinced that in addition to the one hun- 
•ed and fifty-seven honourable members above mentioned, one hun- 
ted and fifty more, making in the whole three hundred and seven, 
I'e returned to your honourable House, not by the collected voice of 
tose whom they appear to represent, but by the recommendation 
■ seventy powerful individuals, added to tlie eighty-four before 
jentioned, and making the total number of patrons altogether only 
ke hundred and fifty-four, v/ho return a decided majority of your 
lonourable House. 

j. " Your petitioners inform your honourable House, and are ready 
,;» prove it at your bar, that they have the most reasonable grounds 
't suspect, that no less than one hundred and fifty of your honourable 



PREFACE. XXXlllj 

7.weml)ers owe their elections entirely to the interference of peers; 
and your petitioners are prepared to show by legal evidence, that \ 
forty peers, in defiance of your resolutions, have possessed them-! 
selves of so many burghage tenures, and obtained such an absolute! 
and uncontrolled command in very many small boroughs in thsj} 
kingdom, as to be enabled by their own positive authority to return) 
eighty-one of your honourable members. j 

" The means taken by candidates to obtain, and by electors to be-' 
stow a seat in your honourable house, appear to have been increas- 
ing in a progressive degree of fraud and corruption. In the 31st 
year of the reign of his present majesty, the number of statutes 
found necessary to prevent bribery, had increased to sixty-five." 

In confirming the allegations and pressing the object ot 
the petition, the honourable Mr. Grey said, that " the evils| 
of the American war were, in his mind, entirely owing to 
the unequal and corrupt representation in Parliament." 
And Mr. Sheridan made the following observations in the 
course of the debate, to which Mr. Grey's motion gave{ 
rise. . i 

" As to the general challenge of proving the abuse which subsists 
in our government, he (Mr. Sheridan) had no delight in it; but as 
he must answer, he should say, that some of the abuses of which he 
complained, and of which a reform of Parliament was the only 
remedy, were, that Peers of the other house sent members to the 
House of Commons by nomination ; that the Crown sent members 
into that house by nomination too; that some members of that house 
sent in members by their own nomination also — all these things 
made a farce of an election for the places for which these were re- 
turned; that men were" created peers without having been of the 
least service to the public in any action of their lives, but merely on 
account of their Parliamentary influence — the present minister had 
been the means of creating a hundred of them. He did not blame 
him, but the fault was in the system of government; corruption 
was the pivot on which the whole of our public government af- 
fairs turned; the collection of taxes was under the management 
of wealthy men in Parliamentary interest, the consequence of which 
was, that the collection of them was neglected ; that to make up 
the deficiency, excisemen must be added to the excise— this soured, 
the temper of the people ; that neither in the church, the army, the 
navy, or any public office, was any appointment given, but through 
Parliamentary influence ; that, in consequence, corrupt majorities 
at the will of the minister.* 



* See the Debate in tJie 39th vol. of the Parliamentary History. 
Vol. I.— E* 



tXXiv PREPACfi. 

The following parts of the debate of the House of Corn- 
nous respecting the new taxes, which I extract from the 
London Courier of Jane 19, 1819, will show what degree 
)f reformation that body has undergone since Mr. Sheii- 
ian's exposition of its character. 

" The Marquis of Tavistock said, (June 18, 1819.) — Was it not 
grievous to reflect, that, when the minister had proposed an income 
;ax, the house defeated his purpose — or, as the noble lord had ex- 
pressed it, relieved themselves, and not the country ? Was it not 
grievous to reflect, that the house had rejected with indignation the 
income tax; and that when other taxes were proposed, which fell 
upon the poor and distressed, they were passed with acclamations, 
and nothing was talked of but the triumphant majorities of minis- 
ters ? (cheering). If any difficulty was felt in believing this to be a 
correct view of the case, let it be recollected, that when the income 
tax was refused in 1816, ministers gave up the malt tax, and the 
noble lord (Castlereagh) said, " Since Parliament has relieved itself 
from the income tax, I and my colleagues relieve the country by 
giving up the malt tax." Why did not ministers, entertaining this 
view of the different taxes, propose a renewal of the income tax, 
which they believed to be a burden upon the members of the house, 
and not upon the country, instead of the taxes which they had 
admitted to be felt by the country, and especially by the poorer 
classes ? They acted so, obviously because they were afraid of a 
defeat in that house upon the income tax. But would they have 
last year proposed the taxes now required? If they had made the 
proposal, would it have been endured in the last year of the last 
Parliament? Was it surprizing that the people of this country 
should be discontented, when they saw their representatives shelter- 
ing themselves from an income tax? (Hear.) — When they saw 
those representatives at the same time laying further taxes on malt>- 
on tea; and on wool ? 

" How happened it, that when the people called loudly and earn- 
estly for retrenchment and economy, the ministers, backed by over- 
whelming majorities, answered them by imposing fresh taxes, and 
increasing their overpowering burdens ? The clear and indisfiuta- 
ble raime ivas, that the majority of that house were returned by 
borough-mong-ering, and corrufition.^ and that the Parliaments con- 
tinued for seven years." 

" Mr. Coke (of Norfolk) said — It was the duty of every man to 
oppose the attempt to arm ministers with nev/ powers of collecting 
money. He was an old member of Parliament, and he had often 
seen and well knew the profligate mode in which the public money 
was squandered: he would not trust them with a single farthing. 
He wooild go the full length of asserting that this ivas a corrufi: 
housCy from ivhich no good could be expected. Ministers had no- 



PREFACE. XXX^j 

tiling' to do but to summon their troops, and they had a majority) 
instantly at their command ; it is in fact a joke upon the country 
and the people felt it to be so from one end of the kingdom to thf 
other." 

" Mr. Ricardo maintained, at some length, that the idea of thert 
being a sinking fund was nothing but a delusion. 

" Before he sat down, he could not help observing, that he con 
curred in every thing which had been said by the noble marquis 
regarding the necessity of a reform in the representation of tha 
house." 

As Earl Grey has rendered this subject of British re 
presentation and election of importance to us, I will set i 
in a broader light by addrtional extracts from the debatesj 
of the House of Commons, as I find them reported in the 
ministerial newspaper, the London Courier. The speak 
ers, with the exception of Lord Cochrane, are all mem 
bers of considerable distinction. 

" Mr. Tierney asked (Feb. fth, 1817,) if the house recollected thi 
number of holders of offices now sitting there. There were not les; 
than sixty of these gentlemen, all of whom were liable to be dis' 
missed at pleasure. If they deducted their number from some O' 
the ministerial majorities, the result would appear, that the fair an«;. 
free sense of the house was against the measures of minister^; 
Many members, too, were certainly connected by the ties of rela' 
tionship to those who were in power." 

"Mr. Brougham said (June 8th, 1819,) that the whole of tha^ 
which gave the patronage of a borough in the county he had men 
tioned, Avhich returned two members, and which had never bee: 
disputed, luas the gross and wilful abuse of a great charitable estatt 
intended strictly for the education of the fioor^ 

" Mr. Brougham said (Feb. irth, 1818,) that in the last year c 
every Parliament, more benefit accrued to the public than ilurin; 
all the preceding years of its existence." 

" Mr. Calvert said (Feb. 7th, 1817,) that he was one of six person 
who had sent two members to Parliament, and for which, each menn 
ber paid 4,500/." 

*' Lord Cochrane said (June 20th, 1817,) he remembered ver 
well the first time he was returned as a member to the house, whic 
was for the borough of Hornton, and on which occasion the tow 
bellman was sent through the town to order the voters to come t 
Mr. Townshend's the head man in that place, and a banker, to r€ 
ceive the sum of 10/. 10s. This was the truth, and he would asl 
how could he, in that situation be called a representative of the pec 
pie in the legitimate constitutional sense of that word ? 

" He had no doubt but there were very many in that house, wh 



XXXVl PREFACE, 

had been returned by similar means. His motive, he was now fully 
|Convinced, was wrong, decidedly wrong; but as he came home 
pretty well flushed with Spanish money, he had found this borough 
open and he had bargained for it ; and he was sure he would have 
been returned, had he been Lord Camelford's black servant, or his 
^reat dog." 

" Sir Robert Heron said (May 19th, 1818,) that the necessity of 
reform had often been acknowledged by the house itself. Distin- 
guished members had offered to prove at the bar its corrupt consti- 
tution, but no strong desire to proceed to those proofs had ever 
been manifested on the part of the house. The corruption was 
manifested by the Grenville act, which declared the house no longer 
fit to be trusted with the decision of its own elections — by the oaths 
and precautions which it declared to be absolutely necessary to pre- 
vent partial decisions." 

"Mr. Lockart said (March 2d, 1818,) that he approved of the 
general principle of the (election laws amendment) bill, especially 
that part forbidding the distribution of cockades. He had known 
30,000 cockades given away at an election, and this signal of party 
was thus made an engine of bribery, not to the multitude at large, 
but towards persons of particular trades." 

" Mr. Wynne said that, at one election he knew that 8,000/. had 
been given to special constables. At another election 1,500 special 
[constables had been engaged at half a guinea a day each." ' 

Camelford election. — '' Mr. D. W. Harvey observed (July 2d^ 
1819,) — the counsel who conducted the case before the committee, 
andertook to prove the existence of a conspiracy for procuring a 
;orrupt return for the borough ; and the report of the committee 
ihowed that that charge had been in a great measure substantiated. 
Fhe facts were — .hat there were twenty-nine electors for Camelford 
— th .tthat borough had been frequently the subject of sale or bar- 
er' — and that it was now the property of a noble lord, whom he 
vould not name, as those who had read the report of the committee 
nust know that his lordship's name was no secret. Not long before 
he last election, a meeting of five of the electors was held at an inn 
lear the borough, called the Alhvorthy, which meeting was joined 
)y a certam Reverend Divine, who expressed to the individuals as- 
lembled a desire to return two members to serve in Parliament for 
he borough of Camelford. To this estimation the electors did not 
)bject. They annexed only one condition to their compliance with 
t, namely, that a large sum of money should be deposited for cey* 
ain purposes which were mentioned in a whisper. It appeared 
hat with that condition the Reverend Divine would not, or could 
lot, comply. The five electors, however, did not abandon their de- 
iign. Accordingly they met again at another inn near Camelford, 
;alled the Five Lanes, where a letter signed James Harvey, was 
•ead, offering 6,000/. for the power of returning two members for 
he borough of Camelford, to be distributed among any fifteen (be- 
ng a majority) of the electors. — This proposal was agreed to. The 
■eply of the letter, containing the acquiescence in the proposal, was 



PREFACE. XXXVU 

addressed to Mr. Sibley, the partner of Mr. Hallett. It was proved 
before the committee that Mr. Hallett had held up 6,000/. before 
his partner, Mr. Sibley, and had said — "■ Sibley, do you think the 
Camelford electors will bite at this ?" As a security for the money, 
it appeared that the half notes of the 6,000/. were deposited atji 
Camelford. Ultimately, however, the conspiracy failed, and the; 
election was lost. It did not appear, however, that the half notes! 
had been returned ; for it was proved that Hallet or Sibley had said 
— ^" What damned rogues those Camelford electors are ! do youj 
know I could not get back the half notes from them without making' 
some compromise 1" 

Mr. Southey had informed us, in Espriella's Letters,} 
that Englishmen regard all kinds of deceit as lawful i 
in electioneering, — that they stop not at asserting the' 
grossest and most impudent falsehoods; — that at a JVb/-; 
fingham election the aiob ducked some, and killed others;' 
that on such occasions no frauds, pious or impious, are' 
scrupled; that any thing like an election, in the plaini 
sense of the word, is unknown in England; that a majo-| 
rity of the members of the House of Commons are re-i 
turned by the most corrupt influence; that seats in that' 
house are not uncommonly advertised in the newspapers; 
that, although oaths are required of the voters, they are, 
evaded by the grossest means; that votes are publicly^ 
bought and sold.* i 

■ All this is abundantly illustrated in the history of th^, 
EngHsh elections of the summer of 1818. Much of the' 
time of the courts of justice and the House of Com- 
mons, since, has been occupied in the investigation ol 
cases of bribery and corruption, involving the most auda- 
cious fraud and perjiny. Besides that of Camelford, al- 
ready mentioned, those of Grampound and Barnstaple 
may be cited as edifying specimens. The tactics of the 
boroughs are thus instructively explained, in the number ol 
Bell's Weekly Messenger, of the 29th June, 1818. 

" Among the various scenes now exhibiting in the progress ol 
the business of the general election, there are one or two to be seen 
in some of the boroughs which deserve not only to be generally 



See Letter xlviii. 



SXXVIU PREFACE. 

known, but which we should hope will not be soon forgotten. We 
deem it a duty to call particular attention to one of these elective 
3odies. Upon the arrival of their late member to repeat his canvass, 
:ie was met by the electors in a body, and the first question put to 
lim was, whether he was Avilling to pay the usual gratuity of 40/; 
aer man ? — that is to say, to invite them all to a breakfast, where 
;ach should find a 40/. bank of England note under his saucer, 
riie gentleman replied that he was really not rich enough to give 
his expensive breakfast to three hundred voters ; but that he had 
'end:;red the borough such important services in their trade, roads, 
md harbour, that he trusted their gratitude would not seize the 
)resent occasion of turning him out ; but if they insisted on the 
to/, per man, they must seek for some one who was better able to 
3uy them at that price." 

"In another borough, the practice of the election we understand 
:o be as follows: — The price of the worthy and independent dec- 
ors is 50/. per head, and one of the principal men in the town being 
\ banker, the money is to be paid in his notes, and at his bank. 
Upon the day preceding the nomination and return, the town crier 
;ives public notice for all the electors to appear personally at the 

)anking house of Mr. , to consult upon a suitable member 

or their independent borough. Each appears accordingly, and re- 
vives his fifty pounds. On the following day, the banker appears 
it the hustings or town hall, recommends very warmly Mr, such a 
)ne, and the electors immediately elect him. No questions are 
Lsked as to the fifty pounds, or from whom it came, and no one of 
course takes any blame to himself for having received a bribe from 
he worthy Mr. such a one. Each is willing lo swear that he never 
;aw his money. The vote is given only from good will to the banker, 
md it seemsthat the oath does not apply to gratuities from third 
persons." 

" In a third borough, the money is given by the * man in the 
noon,' who deputes an attorney for his agent. In a few days the 
lame attorney produces a notice from the same man in the moon, 
hat he could wish their respected and most independent borough to 
)e represented by Mr. A. and Mr. B. two gentlemen with whose 
vorth he is acquainted. The recommendation is adopted as a mat- 
er of course, and two persons as fitted for corruption as themselves 
U'e sent into Parliament. In a word, there is scarcely a slang term 
w a slang practice, which may not be found in the abominable prac- 
ices of some of these boroughs, in which perjury is made a comedy^ 
md the most atrocious roguery converted into a jolly pleasantry. 
^11 these things are going on before our eyes." 

Iq scenes of disorder and violence, the late election 
N3iS as rich as any former occasion of the kind. The 
treatment of Sir Murray Maxwell is not unknown to us 
on this side of the Atlantic. Such horrible outrage as 



PREFACE. XXXIX | 

was practised in Westminster by the tnob, and such ri- )] 
baldry as was exchanged on the hustings by the rival ( 
candidates, " men of rank and fashion/' might procure 
from those who write within the Westminster uproar,; 
some toleration for the occasional animation of our voters, j 
and the rough declamation of our stump orators in thei 
election contests of the southern states. 

The condition of things, in Ireland, with regard to the 
choice of legislators, is truly melancholy, as it is described 
in a late book of travels, possessing the highest autho- 
rity.* "So far," says the author, "are the wretched | 
tenants of the cabins from receiving benefit for their in-' 
apposite distinction of freeholders, that it operates a con- 
trary way, and puts them to expense and loss of time,! 
without the privilege of having any choice. Ruin would' 
inevitably overtake him who should dare to presume to 
have any opinion but that dictated to him by his landlord;; 
and the candidate who should solicit, or accept without!; 
solicitation, the vote of a tenant, against the will of his 
landlord, must answer the irregularity with his life, and 
incur the general odium of his own class of society. Po-\ 
pular opinion has little or no influence in the election oj: 
tlw one hundred Irish members. Election contests with usi 
procure, for a time, some consideration for the lower 
ranks — what dignifies the English character debases the 
Irish. The magnitude of the evil is greater than can be 
conceived by those who have not had an opportunity of 
witnessing its effects. In the most venal places in Eng- 
land, besides the bribe, some condescension is expected: 
here the poor voter is only degraded by an additional link 
to the chain of his dependency. The representation of 
the town rests mostly in each body corporate, which sel- 
dom exceeds twelve members. The selecting for repre- 
sentation by the extent of the population was a farce, in 
which the people had no assigned part to act. The de- 
mocratic part of the British constitution, quoad the Irish, 
had better not exist." 



• Observations on the state of Ireland, written in a tour through that coun- 
try, by J. C. Curwen, Esq. M. P. London. 1818. Vol. 11. Letter It. 



Xl PREFACE. 

" In some instances, the very favours granted the Ca- 
tholics are considered as sources of aggravation, if not of 
Insult — emblazoned badges of slavery! In conferring the 
elective franchise, they have been denied the exercise of 
1 free choice, the proudest prerogative of Englishmen; 
and compelled to feel, in the discharge of the granted 
privilege, their own inferiority/' 

4. It is not in newspapers, reviews, and parliamentary 
speeches alone, that the United States are traduced in 
England. Her writers of formal treatises on' subjects 
'onaected with general literature, and even with natural 
icience, fall into preposterous digressions about the un- 
vorthiness of their " American kinsmen," and are not al- 
vays inordinately scrupulous as to the accuracy of their 
lisparaging statements. I have an instance at hand in 
he following passage of a late work, entitled "The 
history and Practice of Vaccination, by James Moore, 
Director of the National Vaccine Establishment at Lon- 
lon, Member of the Royal College of Surgery, &c." 

"The freedom that reii^ns in the United States of America, is 
ncompatible with unanimity; consequently, the vaccine had to 
itruggle there with a long and violent opposition, which was not 
tiuch allayed by the exenions of the President, Mr. Jefferson, who 
tatronized the new practice; yet by degrees it spread and was in- 
roduced even among the Indian tribes. It was in the year 1799, 
hat this important benefit was conveyed to th 3 United States from 
jrreat Britain. Indeed, except the produce of the soil, what that is 
'aluable has not that nation received from us? Certainly their arts, 
iterature, laws, and religion, the model of their political establish- 
nents, and even their love of liberty. — Yet when Great Britain was 
lard pressed by Napoleon, the United States submitted to the 
;hreats and depredations of the tyrant, &c. But let England forget 
his, and rejoice in being able to add the vaccine to the other bene- 
its conferred on the Americans. And may our physicians continue 
o instruct them to cure and prevent the diseases oi their country;- 
nay our poets soften and delight them; and above all, may our 
jhilosophers improve their dispositions, and perhaps, in a future 
ige, their animosity will cease, and there will spring up in that 
:ountry some filial gratitude!"* 



* Q, 12. 



PREFACE. Xli 

All this objurgation in a history of the vaccine! The 
absurdity and malice of deviating into such topics on 
such an occasioji, would be manifest, though the princi- 
pal accusation should be acknowledged to be sustainable. 
But what ai'e we to think of the member of the Royal 
College of Surgeons, when we reflect that it is unjust; 
that he must have known it to be so; and that it may be 
retorted upon England with tenfold force? There, had 
the vaccine to struggle with a longer and more violent op- 
position, than in any other of the countries into which it 
has been introduced. No heavier disgrace was ever 
brought upon the medical faculty, or the human mind in 
civihzed life, than by the prejudices with which it was 
encountered among a pait of the British population, and 
the pamphlets sent forth against it from the British press, 
in the names of London physicians eminent in their pro-^i 
fession. The opposition to it amounted to phrenzy, even' 
in such quarters; and in the protracted controversy, the! 
foulest scurrility was mixed with the wildest raving. I' 
need but mention Dr. Moseley's Essay on the Lues Bo- 
villa, and the publications of Doctors Rowley, Squirril, 
Birch, Lipscomb, &c. 

In the very book of the director, we have all the evi- 
dence we could desire against Great Britain on this 
head; and in the voluminous publication of Dr. Ring,* 
still more. I refer to this work particularly, because 
it was well known to our faitiiful liistorian, who read 
in it the reverse of what he has alleged against Ame- 
j-ica. Dr. Waterhouse of Boston, acknowledges, in- 
deed, in one of his essays, which Dr. Ring has quoted, 
that some incredulity was displayed, and some ridi- 
cule indulged, in New England, at the first annunciation 
of the discovery; but Dr. Ring furnishes the testimony of 
the same physician, and others of the faculty in the Uni- 
ted States, to show with what rapidity it conciliated even 



* Treatise on tlie Cow-Pox, containing the histoi-y of Vaccine Inoculation, by 
John Ring, Member of the llovul Collci^e, of Sura^eons in London. Part 2d, 
1803. 

YoL. I.— F* 



xFli PREFACE. 

the wannest zeal in its favour, and was carried into* 
general operation. One of Dr. Waterhouse's statements to 
him, of 1801, says — "The arguments thrown out in 
England against this noble discovery and its application, 
are detailed here (in Boston,) but a great majority believe 
and will be saved." Ring writes thus himself — " Some 
unlucky cases, it seems, have damped the ardour of a 
people (the Americans,) who received the new inocula- 
tion with a candour, a liberality, and even generosity 
much to their credit." He recites the cases and adds, 
" This was enough to damp the ardour of any nation." 
A few pages onward, he mentions its signal progress 
throughout the United States; compliments the American 
government for communicating it so promptly to the In- 
dian tribes; and subjoins the following remarks: "Ift 
[England the public opinion is, at the time of my writing 
jthis (1803, five years after Jenner's promulgation of the 
discovery!) rather wavering. Falsehoods propagated by 
ithe most base and despicable characters, have been too 
successsful."* 

It occurred to me to place the extract from surgeon 
Moore's work, under the eye of Dr. Redman Coxe, the 
I present learned professor of Materia Medica in the Uni- 
iversity of Pennsylvania; so honourably and deservedly mear 
itioned in Dr. Ring's Treatise as the physician to whoni 
(Pennsylvania is primarily indebted for the benefit of vac- 
cination. Dr. Coxe has had the goodness to put into my 
'hands a small paper of notes, which I copy as decisive 
testimony on the subject, since his knowledge of the pro- 
gress and estabhshment of the discovery in the United 
States, is more direct and minute, than that of any other 
person. , 

"I am confident I am correct in asserting, that no novelty'ftt' 
equal importance to mankind, was ever received in any countrj'*^ 
with more rapidity — more unanimity, or more extensively. It is 
true, the same cautious spirit which ought invariably to govern «s 
in concerns of this nature, led many medical men (not to oppose 

, . ^ ,, . ?s .%- 

* P. 760. The controversy raged with unabated violence as late as 1806 — ~ 



PIIEFACE. xliS 



it^ progress, but) merely to await the result of experiments, in or-j 
aer to determine their judgments. What opposition has this Jen- 
nerian blessing ever met with in this country, that equals even a I 
tenth part of that which it received in Great Britain? Let Mr. Ring's' 
elaborate production on the subject of vaccination clear us from the; 
reproach thrown on us. — In that work, his pen has unfolded the; 
opposition it encountered from almost every quarter of the Unitedj 
Kingdoms of Great Britain; an opposition, the effects of which have' 
scarcely yet subsided there; v/hilst here, for many years, even aj 
whisper against it has not been raised. — Were it necessary, I coul4 
give you perhaps one hundred letters from medical men in all parts, 
of America, received within twelve months after I had introduced 
it here, earnestly applying for the infection, and requesting infor-! 
mation respecting the disease. I saw, in fact, nothing like opposi-i 
tion; — I read of none in our medical journals. An uniform desiref 
was every where evinced to spread the benefit as speedily as possi- 
ble. A few miserable quacks alone, who depended on the smalU, 
pox for their daily bread, protested against it> — and even of those, 
the greater part soon were obliged to yield to the popular opinion' 
if^ its favour. .; ( 

"" "Such are the facts which stifle the inconsiderate assertion oft 
Mr. Moore — I need scarcely add to the number; which if neces-; 
sary, I could easily do. The disease had fully established its repu* 
tation in A.merica within two years from its first introduction herej' 
and long beFore its claims were admitted freely in Great Britain." 

There are some points at least, as to which "the free- 
flom that reigns in the United States of America/' would 
not seem to be incompatible with unanimity. If the whole 
population of those states were canvassed, perhaps not 
one individual would be found disaffected to the form and 
constitution of their government. The number malecon- 
tent with the system of administration, or distrustful of 
the ability and integrity of the present executive councils, 
is certainly so small as to disappear on a glance at the 
mass of citizens in the opposite temper of mind. Firmis*- 

SIMUM IMPERIUM QUO OBEDIENTES GAUDENT. 

How far has the freedom which reigns in Great Bri- 
tain proved eifectual to create unanimity as to her political 
institutions, and the composition and course of her national 
councils.^ Is not the monarchy itself odious to a multi- 
tude of her subjects.'* The mechanism of her legislature 
and cabinet, and the system of administration are matters 
of disgust and outcry through every rank and class of her 



Xliv PREFACE. 

inhabitants. From the highest quarters we are informed, 
and, indeed, the fact cannot fail to be perceived, even at a 
distance, that the great majority of the British people 
have not the least confidence in the patriotism and disin- 
terestedness of any of the parties in Parliament, or of the 
men in place; all are believed to aim only at the possession 
of power and patronage. Among the lower orders, sedi- 
tion is declared to have a permanent abode, and to prowl 
without intermission. " There prevails," said Mr. Lamb, 
in the House of Commons (March 11, 1818,) "though 
to what extent I will not pretend accurately to define, in 
all the manufacturing districts, a spirit always active, inve- 
terate, and implacable: not exasperated by suffering; not 
soothed by prosperity; not allayed by time; a spirit ever 
laying in wait, and in ambush, to take advantage of the 
disasters of the country." 

We see fully verified at this moment, the creed of this 
member of Parliament, a whig leader: the habitual leven 
of insurrection only becomes the more active and expan- 
sive, as the rate of wages or the supply of food declines. 
It places the British government, in the season of ferment, 
as at present, under the horrible necessity of shedding, 
with the apparatus of war, the blood of the guiltless, per- 
haps loyal peasant, whom the want of occupation draws to 
the convention of starving manufacturers, and hairbrain- 
ed, or counterfeit demagogues.* It leads — I will not say 
obliges — that government, to resort to one of the most 
hateful of the devices of timorous despotism — the employ- 
ment of spies and informers, who cannot execute their 
office, without, to a certain degree, studiously exasperating 
the discontents^ and encouraging the delusions, against 
which it is the alleged object of their mission to guard. 
It does more: it throws the constitution off its poise; it 
creates a potential dictatorship in the ministry, who either 
do feel, or profess to feel themselves bound to consult the 

* See the history of the Mancliester meeting-, of Aiigust 16th, at which 
women and girls were cut and trampled down by corps of ilragoons, and left 
mangled and weltering, to be conveyed in carts to the hospitals. 



PREFACE. Xlj 

tranquillity of the state, or of particular parts of the kin^ 
dom, at the expense of the established forms and rules ^ 
law; counting upon what they are always sure to procure 
indemnity by vote of Parliament. — What is there in th| 
American republic comparable to this state of things.'^ | 
This want o[ imanmiity, this propensity to rebellioui 
violence, among the lower orders, has placed the Brilis; 
rulers under another embarrassment, the most awful thj 
can be imagined, and far outweighing any evil in our s 
tiiatiou, realized or threatened by our negro slavery. [ 
According to the best authorities, the system of thj 
poor rates in England, is proceeding to take the whol 
produce of the land from tlie owner, with very little bene 
fit to the poor. It already " amounts, with the land ta! 
and tythes, in many parishes, to a disherison of the pr(i 
perty of the landholder,"* It "falls exclusively on lano^ 
and houses, the dividends (exceeding twenty-seven millioC 
sterling) upon the unredeemed national debt, of eigll 
hundred millions sterling, being wholly exempt. "f If 
operation is most oppressively partial, independently ( 
lliis last circumstance, so unjust and invidious. It fornr 
a tax thus characterized, which, according to some, mui 
amount for the year 1818, to ten millions sterling,! pei 
haps to twelve; and this product is chiefly consumed i 

-i rearing the offspring of improvidence and vice. It is fa; 

t?f multiplying the already immense number of paupers, an 
widening the acknowledged degeneracy of the labourin 
classes.§ It exhibits, in short, to use the language c 
Colquhoun, one-ninth part of a numerous nation eocistin 
as paupers, vagabonds, idlers, and criminal offenders, c 

Uihe expense of one-third of the remaining population.'^ 

Mn the year 1812, the number of paupers who receive 
parish relief, besides vagrants, was 1,208,125, out of a p( 



* lleport on the Poor Laws, from the Committee of the House of Commor 
1817. Appendix, 
f Observations on the Poor Laws. By J. Lord Sheffield. London, 1818. 
i Lord Sheffield 

§ See Note X. at the end of this volume. 
I Treatise on Indigence. P. 2C2. 



Ivi PREFACE. 

ulation of 10,653,000.* The proportion of really ini- 
otent paupers in the number just stated, was but one- 
jventh, according to the ratio officially returned for 1804. 
It will be found, on investigation,'^ says Colquhoun, 
lat, of a million and ahalf of paupers with their famihes, 
ow living chiefly on the labour of others, considerahhj 
wre than half a million are in the vigour of life, and 
hose labour, if well directed, ought to produce at least 
!n millions sterling beyond their present earnings; which 
jm is totally lost to the community, in addition to what 
expended in affording them a feeble and scanty subsist- 
nce.^'t Since the termination of the last war, this 
retched and noxious class of persons has been progres- 
vely increasing in number, and deteriorating in charac- 

The only true remedy for this mnnifold, portentous 
t'il, is the abolition or great reduction of the poor rates. 
ut the government, though it has before it the alterna- 
ve of ultimate ruin to the country, dares not go beyond 
alliatives.J Near a milUon of sturdy beggars could not 



* Clarkson's Enquiry on Pauperism. London, 1816. 

•j- Treatise on the Wealth, Power, and liesources of the British Empire. 
Dndon, 1814. 

i The late.act of Parliament, (59 G. 111. 1819,) " to amend the laws for the 
lief of the poor," aims only at mitigating-, not eradicatinj^, the evil. Very 
lie confidence seemed to he entertained by Parliament, in its efficacy for any 
irpose. Mr. S. Bourne, the member most active on tiiis question, hud unsuc- 
!ssfully proposed a bill, respecting the failure of which 1 find the following 
imarkable observations in Bell's Weekly Messt-nj^er of 17tli May, 1819. 
"The two great interests of the conntr)', the agricultural and the manufac- 
ring interests, are here in direct conflict. The complaint of the landed in- 
rest is, that they have to pay the poor-rates for the m:'nufacturing labourers r 
hat the manufacturers not only employ and wear out tiie men, but, as it were, 
•oduce and call into existence a mendicant population ; and, after they have 
id the best days of the labourer, and encouraged him to marry and rear a 
rge family, they return him unto the parish from whence they first took liini. 
"The object of this bill was, that all v/ho resided three years in any parish, 
.ould be settled in such parish, or, in other words, (for such was its purpose as 
ell as its effect,) that the manufacturing towns and districts should support 
eir own old and sick poor. Accordingly, all the manufacturing districts have, 
a man, united in opposition against it, and, by a private address to every 
ember of parliament singly, have actually succeeded in throwing it out, and 
is in a House of Commons, the majority of which is necessarily of the landed 
terest. We must confess that this issue of the bill has very much surprised 
, and, we believe, neither Mr. Bourne himself, nor any of the committee, 
:pected this event. The bill, however, is lost for the present session." 



FREFACE. Xlvi 

he starved with impunity; they would be provoked by ai,; 
solute deprivation to persevering violence; such a nucleu 
for riot and rebellion, is not to be set in motion, to gathe 
actively what no array of the military might be sufficier 
to crush, without extensive desolation. Colonization i 
now attempted as a means of relief; and the Cape c 
Good Hope is chosen as the theatre, in order that a dou 
ble purpose may be answered: but this expedient, if an 
number of the vampyres can be drawn off, will be lik 
tapping for a radical dropsy. The poor rates will conti 
nue, with the taxes* and the tythes, generating paupei^ 



* " It was acknowledged," said Lord Ebiington, in the House of Common! 
(April 2Slii, 1819,) " tliut a labourer, whose income did not exceed 18/. a yea; 
paid 27s. a year liuly on the salt he consumed." Dr. Phillimorc, in the cours 
of his speech of the same dale, respecting the salt duties, made this statemen 
"The bushel of salt is ta.xed at /or^?/ times its value, and the tax falls upon a 
the necessaries of the poor. No ta.\ operates more on their morals ; and it ha 
been found, that wiierever it prevailed, it was tlie sure forerunner of crimi 
It was distinctly stated in an address of the grand jury for the county of Chej 
ter, that tiie profit derived from selling untaxed salt was so great, and operate 
ijo powerfully, as to taint the morals of that parti of the community. The ev 
dence before the committee, derived from various sources, all tended to est. 
bllsh the same conclusion. The temptation to steal, and conceal what W8 
stolen, was such as to cause the practice too generally to prevail." 

The following quotations from the debates of I'arliament will illustrate th 
operation of another single tax, upon the lower orders. 

"Mr. Gratian saiil, as to the dangerous prevalence of the fever in Irelan 
being in part attributable to the confined air of the abodes of the poor, ther 
rould be no stronger proof tiian tlie relaxation granted by government, cnablin 
the parties deprived of adequiae ventillation, to open their windows wilhot 
being liable to the window ta.x." 

"if a single individual," said the Marquis of Downshire (House of Lord: 
March, 1S19,) "lived in a house, it became liable to the window tax ; and ownei 
therefore, in Ireland, crowded great numbers into one, and shut up others, t 
avoid paying the ta.\es." 

" Sir John Newport said, (May 13th, 1818,) he wished to inform the housj 
that in comparing the accounts of 1S14 and 1818, it was found tiiat no less tha 
one-tenth of the windows of the kingdom of Ireland, within that period, ha 
been closed up to avoid the tax, and he should appeal to the house whether sue 
a. circumstance was not calculated to have a most injurious etiect, particulArl 
Oh the poorer classes, by depriving them of air antl light. Ta.xation in Irelan 
Jjad, within a short period, increaseti wi'.li a rapiility which was grievousl) felt 

"Mr. liobert Shaw asked, (April 21si, 1818,) are genilemen aware, tliatur 
dcr the present act (for taxing windows,) the collectors can demand an entranc 
into every room in every house in Ireland, from eight in the morning until sui 
riet, and insist upon admission, under a penalty of 20/..' 

_ " .Mr. Shaw stated, (May Gth, 1819.) tiiai in th.- part of Dublin called th 
liberties, the houses were large enough to be subject lo the window tax, ai. 
were inhabited by the poor and miserable. Tlie government had felt that s 
u.-ep]v, that it had announced, that wherever windows had been opened to fac 



Mviii PREFACE. 

Hm; and, above all, the exorbitant system of manufactures^ 
^;hich perpetually throws back upon the agricultural dis- 
^/icts, as mendicants and desperadoes, those labourers 
^hon; it received from them originally, in that happier 
^f>ndit'oo of body and mind, which is the regular effect 
^f :^ncultural life. It is this operation, resulting from 
^le English law of settlement as to paupers, along with 
■ther adventitious causes,* which makes the returns of 
'lendicity and criminality from some of the agricultural 
bounties of England, larger than those from the manufac- 
uring districts, and thus libels, as it w^ere, that state and 
'Ccupation most favourable to the moral and physical 
velfare of our species. 

To revert to Surgeon Moore. His suggestion about 
ilial gratitude will be found fully answered in the body 
»f this volume, as well as the chiding remark of the 
Quarterly Review, in the article on Fearon's Travels — 
hat " the American colonists grew up in prosperity, 
aaintained and fostered by a liberal parent, who saw, with 
leartfelt satisfaction, her offspring increase in strength 
nd stature, and advance with firm and rapid steps to- 
i^ards matiu'ity." I rely upon the facts and statements 
i^hich I adduce in my first sections, as sufficient to dis- 
lel this hallucination of the reviewers. 

The other topic upon which the surgeon has touched, 
—the animosity of the Americans against Great Biitain, 
I'hich her philosophers are to correct, in lapse of time, by 
inproving our dispositions, is a favourite one with the 
ravellers and reviewers, and is treated by them with the 
lore emphasis, because it serves to promote their main 

;ate the circulation of air and prevent infection, the tax would be remitted. It 
oiild no doubt be iirged that but few liad availed themselves of this offer ; but 
lat was because they ha<l imfortuiiately too little confidence in the veracity of 
ivernment. They did not possess besides the means of openinjc liiose windows, 
his was proved by the report of Dr. Parker in 1807 and 1812, and confirmed 
(•the number of windows closed, according to the notices given. Tiiose no- 
:es amounted for the last three years to tliiity-two thousand, four hundred and 
renty-four, of which 3,501 came from Dublin alone, and it might be inferred 
;at the distress was great which would thus drive men to deny themselves the 
jht of Heaven and a free circulation of air." 

* See Colquhoun's Treatise on Indigence, p. 273, 4. and Treatise on the Re- 
urces of the British Empire, p. 12 



PREFACE. Xn? 

©bject of raising aversion and distrust in the breasts o] 
their countrymen. 

On this score, as well as every other, great injustice h 
done to the Americans. No small number of them art 
entitled to consider the imputation as a sort of ingratitude 
on the part of an Englishman. I will venture to asseri 
that in no nation, foreign to Britain, had she, until the se-j 
cond year of our last war, so many warm, firm friends, 
and blind admirers, as in the American. A great party, 
the Federalists, forming a decided majority in seven oi 
eight states, numerous in most of the others, and having 
a full proportion of the desert, intelligence, and wealth ol 
the country, were contradistinguished by their veneration 
for her character, and the deep, affectionate interest which 
they took in her prosperity. They exulted in her successes 
over France, even at the time when she was waging war 
upon their own firesides. This was not merely because 
they detested and dreaded the ascendancy of the French 
military despotism, but because much of the old positive 
kindness and reverence towards her remained. She might 
have revived it entirely by a course of generosity and 
justice; by teaching her philosophers to attempt the "im- 
provement of our dispositions," and her politicians to 
regulate their language and conduct, upon a different sys- 
tem from that which they have pursued. 

Habitual ejaculations of contempt and ill-nature, join- 
ed to a new state of things, have a sure tendency to 
produce total alienation. The new state of things to 
which I allude, consists in the prostration of the Gorgon in 
France, by which so many of us were petrified; the con- 
sequent restoration of our powers of vision and reflection, 
in regard to its colossal antagonist; and the remission of 
those intestine heats which, having their origin, in part, 
in an inordinate preference of the cause of one or the 
other European belligerent, conduced in turn to aggra- 
vate that preference. The Anglo-mania has, I believe, 
almost universally subsided; but, notwithstanding the stu- 
died contumelies and injuries to which no American can 
be insensible, it has not yet been replaced in the same 

Vol. I.— G* 



PREFACE. 

)reasts by sentiments of hostility. We lament that peril- 
)us crisis at which England has arrived; when, with a^ 
crushing apparatus of government, a most distorted and 
listempered state of society, no reform can be admitted, 
est it should run, by its own momentum, to extremes, and 
)roduce general confusion; when her statesmen, over- 
)Owered by the very aspect of so much morbidness and 
obliquity, are compelled to exclaim, JS'ec vitia, nee reme- 
lia pati possumus. We cherish and esteem the English 
ndividuals whom we possess, and, without coveting the 
)resence of more, we are ready to entertain the same 
eelings, to practise all the charities, towards those who 
nay come among us at any time, provided it be not for 
he purpose of holding us up to the scorn and derision of 
he world. 



CONTENTS. 



SECTION I. 

PoiiTicAt and Mercantile Jealousy of Great Britain. Peculiar fate of the North 
American Colonies in being constantly defamed by the mother country. 
Her early jealousy and selfish alarms. Testimony of Evelyn, Hume, Pos- 
tlethwayt. Child, Gee, &c. Measures to prevent the growth of American 
manufactures. Illiberal colonial policy. Testimony of Adam Smith, of 
Dummer, &.c. Scheme of confining the North American settlernents to 
the sea-coast. Early panic about emigration ; attempts to repress it, &c. 

SECTION II. 

General Character and Merits of the Colonists. English testimony in their favour. 
Quarterly Review; Burke; Chalmers, &c. Character of the first settlers 
in New England ; in Virginia ; and the other provinces. Their respecta- 
ble rank in life ; their love of liberty and independence ; the excellence 
of their institutions ; no obligations to the mother country on this score. 
Charters how obtained. Uniform endeavours of the mother country to 
destroy the Charters. System of religious freedom and equality esta- 
blished by the Colonists ; disturbed, and, in some instances, subverted, by 
the mother country. Religious intolerance of Massachusetts extenuated. 
Political intrepidity of the Colonists; leading traits of it in their history., 
Their domestic morals and habits ; religious spirit. Their attention to the 
object of general education. Their moderation and beneficence towards 
the aborigines. Their physical economy and prosperity. 

SECTION III. 

Oifficulties surmounted by the Colonists. The conquest of the wilderness. 
Oppressive administration of the mother country. Absence of all external 
aid. Struggle with the Indians; with tlie French of Canada. Accusations 
of the mother country, as to the treatment of the Indians, retorted. Case 
of the Acadiansin 1755; barbarous conduct of Great Britain tovvards them. 
Wars which she made in America, exclusively her own, and not induced by 
the interest of the colonies. 

SECTION IV. 

Great exertions and sacrifices of the colonies in the wars of Great Britain, be- 
tween the years 1680 -md 1763. Expeditions of New England and New^ 
York against Canada. Hostilities with the Indians in New England aofi the 
Caiohnas. Provincial expeditions against the Spaniards in Flo-ida. Injus- 




' lii CONTENTS. 

I mana.o^omenUind imbecility of tlie British generals. Aclilevements of the 

Provincials. Aspersions cast upon them. Insensibility of the mother coun- 
try to their merits. Confirmation of the contents of this Section by British 

; testimony. 

SKCTION V. 

Commercial obligations of Great Britain to the Colonies. Acknowledgments of 
[ her political writers Amount of the colonial trade at different epochs. 

Details of its nature and productiveness. Lord Shefiield; Mr. Glover; 
• Anderson; Chatham; Mr. Burke; Champion. Consumption of British 

manufactures by the colonies. Good faith of the American merchants. 

Rigour of the British monopoly. Disadvantages suffered by the Colonies. 

Benefits reaped by Great Britain from her commercial intercourse with the 

United States of America. 

SECTION VI. 

.Vftectionate hn'alty of the Colonists at the peace of 1763. No designs of in- 
dependence. Refutation of Chalmers and Robertson on this liead. Dis- 
trust and despotic aims of the mother countrj'. Her ingratitude and harsh- 
ness. Stamj) Act, and its train of outrages and contumelies. Applause 
bestowed upon the resistance of the colonies by Chatham and Camden. 
Character of trie British councils. Their ignorance concerning America. 
Enlightened discourse of Glover False ideas entertained of America. 
Overweening confidence of the British ministry and nation. Abuse of the 
colonies. Colonel Grant, Earl of Sandwich, &c. Ferocity of tl)e hostili- 
ties waged by the mother country. Her acrimony of feeling and expres- 
sion. Her temper of mind at and after the conclusion of peace. Illusions 
in which she indulged. Oracles of Lord Sheffield. Contrast between 
her dispositions and those of the United States. Her unremitted enmity 
and jealousy. Evidences. Disappointment of her hopes. 

SECTION vir. 

Tilles of the United States to the respect and good will of Great Britain. Ani- 
mosity and arrogance of the British periodical writers. Edinburgh Re 
view — its .system of derision and obloquy. How distinguished from the 
Quarterly Review in this respect. Instances of its malevolence and incon- 
sistency. Article on Davis's Travels ; Transactions of the American Plii- 
losopliical Society; Letters on Silesia of John Quincy Adams; Life of 
Washington, by Chief Justice Marshall ; Ashe's Travels ; Columbiad of 
Barlow, &c. Sneers and Calumnies, Exposition of some of the contra- 
dictions abounding in the Edinburgh Review. Reprisals upon Great Bri- 
tain. 

SECTION VIII. 

The Quarterly Review. Its implacable enmity ; false logic ; unworthy pro- 
ceeding ; invectives and misrepresentations. Articles on American works : 
— Inchiqnin's View of the United States — Lewis and Clarke's Expedition — 
Life of Fulton, by Cadwallader Colden, Esq. This work defended against 
the Quarterly Review. Question of Steam Navigation. Fulton's merits 
asserted. Controversy respecting the invention of the Quadrant, called 
Hadley's. The claims of Godfrey maintained. Original evidence. James 
Logan. Contradictions, as to England, detected,in the Quarterly Review ; 
British Critic : London Critical Joiu'nal ; their ribaldry. E.\aininatior, and 
Refatition of the charge against America, of having declared herself, in 
Congress, " the freest and most enlightened nation of the earth." Speech 
of Fisher Ames. Defence of the American Congress from other charges. 
Retort upon the British Parliament. 



CONTENTS. liii 

SECTION IX. 

Accusations of the Edinburgh Review respecting the existence of negro slaveryj 
in the United States. Early upbraidings of England on the same head] 
Her share in the establishment of that evil. Early denunciations of it by! 
the colonists. Tlieir repeated attempts to arrest the introduction of ne- 
groes. Inflexibility of the mother country. American abolition of the 
slave trade. Measures of the State Legislatures and of Congress on this 
subject. United Slates have the merit of priority. Historical deductioa 
of the British slave trade. Its extent and criminality. Developments. His- 
tory of the British abolition of the slave trade. Its interested and imper- 
fect character. Selfish aims of the British government. Supine ness of the 
ministry until the approach of the peace of 1814. Concession of the slave 
trade to Spain, Portugal, and France. Fatal consequences. British capital 
largely engaged in the illicit trade. Negotiations at the Congress of Vi- 
enna. Insidious propositions of Lord Castlereagh. Miscarriage. British 
West Indies adequately supplied with negroes since the British abolition. 
West India slavery ; its character; in no degree mitigated. Renewed ne- 
gotiations with foreign powers. Their well founded distrust of the views of 
Great Britain in relation to the general abolition of the slave trade. De- 
velopment of those views. Frustration of her scheme of establishiiig a. 
right of search in time of peace. Hypocrisy and imposture. Present state 
of the slave trade. Vindication of the United States, as regards the exist- 
ence of slavery within their bosom. What they have separately effected 
in the way of abolition. Colonization. Character and condition of the 
American negrots, free and enslaved. Character and deportment of the 
American masters. Denial of the allegations of the British travellers. 
.State of the British Poor. 

SUBJECTS OF THE NOTES. 

Indian Warfare. Locke's Constitutions for Carolina. Religious toleration of 
Rhode Island. Maroon War in Jamaica. Petition of the Acadians to the 
King of Great Britain. Reduction of Louisbouvg. Br iddock's papers. 
Loiiilon's campaigns. Franklin's refutation of tiie Britisli calumnies of 
1759. Character of tlie Rovui Governors of the Colonies Credulity of 
the British Cabinet of 1776 — 8 — 9. Derjates in Parliament on American 
cowardice. Utility of the North American colonies as an asylum for Bri- 
tish subjects. The American Philosophical Society. Marshall's Lift of 
■Washington. State of society in Great Britain as to the vices of intoxica- 
tion and gambling ; cruelty to animals; brutal sports and conflicis, &c. Dr. 
Colden. Steam Boat navigation. James Logan. Position of the English 
and Irish Roman Catholics. Kidnapping in Great Britain and the United 
States. British Poor, and Poor Laws. Established Ciiurch in England. 
British prisons; criminal calendar; administration of penal justice, finan- 
cial affairs, &c. 



MEMENTOS. 



" Let us read, and recollect, and impress upon our souls, the views and 
ends of our own more immediate forefathers, in exchanging their native 
country for a dreary, inliospitable wilderness. Let us examine into the 
nature of that power, and the cruelty of that oppression, which drove 
them from their homes. Recollect their amazing fortitude, their bitter 
sufferings! the hunger, the nakedness, the cold, which they patiently 
endured! the severe labours of clearing their grounds, building their 
houses, raising their provisions, amidst dangers from wild beasts and 
savage men, before they had time, or money, or materials for commerce ! 
Recollect the civil and religious principles, and hopes, and expectations, 
which constantly supported and carried them through all hardships, 
with patience and resignation !" 

Essay on the Canon and Faidal Law, by John Adams, Esq. 1765. 

" If we do not, my lords, get the better of America, America will 
get the better of us. We do not fear, at present, that they will attack 
us at home ; but consider, on the other hand, what will be the fate of 
the sugar islands, what will be the fate of our trade to that country. 
That, my lords, is a most valuable, important consideration ; it is the 
best feather in our wing. The people of America are preparing to 
raise a navy; they have begun in part; trade will beget opulence, and 
by that means they will be enabled to hire ships from foreign powers." 

Lord Mansfield, House of Lords, 1775. 

" It hurts me to hear a proposition urged in this house, so destruc- 
tive to the welfare of Britain, as American independence. Would not 
the independency of America be the eve of their advancement into a 
Jlovrishing naval potver? Their situation commanding a species of supe- 
riority over all the earth, they woidd soon rival Europe in arts, as well 
as grandeur, and their power in particular would rear itself on the 
decay of ours. Are we, then, so lost to all the feelings of patriotism, 
that, with a wanton hand, we should lay the foundation stone of a block- 
ade against our own existence ?" 

J\Ir. PuUeney, House of Commons, 1777. 

"We have heard, indeed, the prosperity of America declared, by 
Lord Sidmouth, when he was minister of state, to be an awful warning 
to Great Britain, never hereafter to colonize a new country. Merciful 
Heaven! that the brethren of our ancestors should have founded a 
mighty empire, indefinite in its increase — an empire, which retains, and 
is spreading, all that constitutes "country" in a wise man's feelings, 
viz. the same laws, the same customs, the same religion, and, above all, 
the same language; tliat, in short, to have been the mother of a pros- 
perous empire, is to be a ivamingto Great Britain ! And whence this 
dread ? Because, forsooth, our eldest born, when of age, liad set up 
for himself; jyid not only preserving, but, in an almost incalculable 



Ivi MEMENTOS. 

proportion, Increasing the advantages of former reciprocal intercourse, 
had saved us the expense and anxiety of defending, and the embarrass- 
ment of governing a country three thousand miles distant ! That this 
separation was at length effected by violence, and the horrors of a civil 
war, is to be attributed solely to the ignorance and corruption of the 
many, and the perilous bigotry of a few." — JVb. 24, Edinburgh Review. 

"Let our jealousy burn as it may; let our intolerance of America be 
as unreasonably violent as we please ; still, it is plain that she is a j)ower, 
in spite of us, rapidly rising to supremacy ; or, at least, tliat each year 
so mightily augments her strength, as to overtake, by a most sensible 
distance, even the most formidable of her competitors." 

JVu. 49, Edinbiirgh Sevieiv. 

"In one of my late rambles, I accidentally fell into the company of 
half a dozen gentlemen, who were engaged in a warm dispute about 
some political affair ; which naturally drew me in for a share of the con- 
versation. 

"Amongst a multiplicity of other topics, we took occasion to talk of 
the different characters of the several nations of Europe; when one of 
the gentlemen, cocking his hat, and assuming such an air of impoi-tance 
as if he had possessed all the merit of tiie English nation ;in his own 
person, declared that the Dutch were a parcel of avaricious wretches; 
the French a set of flattering sycophants; that the Germans were 
drunken sots, and beastly gluttons ; and the Spaniards proud, haughty, 
and surly tyrants ; but that, in bravery, generositj^, clemency, and in 
every other virtue, the English excelled all the rest of the world. 

" This very learned and judicious remark was received with a genera! 
smile of approbation by all the company — all, I mean, but your humble 
servant." Goldsmith's Essays — Essay XL 



PART I. 



SECTION I. 



OF THE POLITICAL AND MERCANTILE JEALOUSY OF GREAT 

BUITAIN. 

" AMERICA is destined at all events, to be a great and SEC 
powerful nation. In less than a century, she must have a 
population of at least seventy or eighty millions. War can- 
not prevent, and it appears from experience, can scarcely 
retard, this natural multiplication. All these people will 
speak English ; and, according to the most probable conjec- 
ture, will live under free governments, whether republican 
or monarchical, and will be industrious, well educated, and 
civilized. Within no very great distance of time, there- 
fore, — within a period to which those who are now en- 
tering life may easily survive, — America will be one of 
the most powerful and important nations of the earth ; 
and her friendship and commerce will be more valued, 
in all probability, than that of any European state.'* 
Such were the speculations of the Edinburgh Review, in 
the year 1814. In looking forward to what this journal 
predicts, — to the supremacy in power and character which the 
North Americans are destined to reach, — there is something 
not only curious, but instructive, in the fact, that they have 
been and are more contemned and defamed than any other 
people of whom history has kept a record. Compared with 
our fate in this respect, that of Boeotia among the ancients, 
severe as it was and sufficiently unjust, may be described as 
condign and lenient. It was not alone in their exemption 
from political and commercial dependence, that the colonies 

VOL. I. A 



POLITICAL AND 

of Greece may be said to have been more fortunate than those 
of modern Europe. Neither enlightened Greece, — nor evei^ 
imperious Rome, or rapacious Carthage whose colonial policy 
bore a nearer resemblance to the modern, — made perpetual 
war upon the reputation of its emigrant offspring. The parent 
state was sometimes exorbitant in its demands, and tyrannical 
in the exercise of its superior force ; but the colony had not to 
contend with a system of universal detraction ; — to serve as a 
n\ark for the arrogance, spleen, or jocularity of orators, poets, 
and reviewers. 

The wise man of Europe — homo sapiens Eiiropce — not 
satisfied with sneering and railing at these distant settlements, 
conspired, at one time, to decry nature herself in her opera- 
tions on die new continent: and the theories of Buffon, Ray- 
nal, and De Paw, so fashionable and authoritative during a 
certain period, though now so entirely exploded, are to be 
cited in illustration of the state of the European mind towards 
the Western Woi-ld. The feature not the least remark- 
able, belonging to this case is, that the particular mother- 
country which might have been expected to be most tender of 
the feelings and character of her colonies, out of a due regard 
to justice, gratitude, and her own interests, was, at times, 
the most scornful in her tone, and the loudest in the chorus of 
obloquy. Great Britain continued to throw out sarcasms 
and reproaches against her North American kinsmen, after 
the continent of Europe had adopted the opposite style, and 
had even passed into an enthusiastic admiration. We may 
pardon vapouring, and invective,, and affected derision, at 
the juncture when her authority was directly questioned, and 
her colossal power braved by the thii'teen pigmy communities 
oi provincials ; and some allowance is to be made for the play 
of passions strongly excited, during and immediately after 
the struggle, by which she lost so valuable a portion of her 
empire : But the same course has been pursued without any 
abatement of virulence or exception of topics, towards these 
Independent United States ; it has not been abandoned after a 
becond war, and after a developement of character, resources, 
and destinies, which would seem sufficiepit to silence malice 
and subdue the most sturdy prejudice. When the "planta- 
tions" had grown into colonies, England still thought and 
spoke of them as the plantations: — since the colonies have 
transformed themselves into an independent and powerful 
nation, it is the colonies^ with an imagery to which increased 
jealousy and despite have added new and more hideou's 
dhimeras, that are yet seen in tUe English speculum. 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 

We know that some of the states of antiquity harboured a ^^ 
mischievous jealousy of the prosperity, spirit, and aims ot ^"^ 
their colonies ; but it was only when the latter had become 
truly formidable ; had attained to an equality of strength, and 
given unequivocal evidence of indifference, estrangement, or 
hostility. But among the modern colonies, the Anglo-North 
American, were precisely those which stood the farthest from 
this relation, — which, in all stages of their existence, whether 
we consider their dispositions, or the general circumstances 
of their condition, pi-esented the least cause of distrust or 
alarm to the powerful parent. One of a truly magnanimous 
and judicious character would have seen, as I hope to prove, 
abundant reason for treating them with the utmost latitude of 
indulgence and " ceremonious kindness." England, however^ 
is the mother countrv, who, although perpetually proclaiming 
the weakness, as well as insulting the origin, and vilifying 
the pursuits of her plantations^ conceived the earliest fears 
for her supremacy ; who displayed, throughout, the keenest pa- 
litical and mercantile jealousy. It is true, that the other 
European powers established and maintained in their settle- 
ments on this continent, a stricter commercial monopoly, and ^ 
more arbitrary systems of internal administration. It is 
equally true, however, that England always sought to secure 
to herself the carriage of the produce of her North American 
colonies ; to engross their raw materials, and to furnish them 
with the articles of every kind which they required from 
abroad : That if, from the cupidit}^ or indifference of her mo- 
narchs, charters of a liberal genius were granted to the first 
settlers — if, from a like cause, or national embarrassments, 
commonwealths thus cast in the mould of freedom were suf- 
fered to acquire consistency, and to become identified as it - 
v/ere with their first institutions — she made incessant attempts 
to destroy those charters, and substitute a despotic rule. Her 
writers on the trade and general politics of the empire, her 
colonial servants, civil and military, continually called for a 
more rigorous monopoly and subjection. It was owing to 
extraneous events, and to the firmness, vigilance, and dex- 
terity of the provinces, that they remained in possession of 
their liberties. I scarcely need remark in addition, that it 
was a scheme of administration tending to place them on the 
level of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, which impelled 
them to attempt and achieve their independence. 

The main purpose of this work imposes upon me the task, 
of adducing some portion of the abundant evidence which 
books afford, in support of the general assertions made above: 



POLITICAL AND 

^ '• And it appears to me not unadvisable on other grounds, to 
^^ retiesh the memory of the public, with respect to the early 
dispositions and proceedings of Great Britain, towards these 
North American communities. I will begin Avith the point 
to which I have first adverted — her political and mercantile 
jealoiisif. 



1. This feeling was coeval with the fovmdation of the 
colonies. Nothing similar is to be traced so high in the 
colonial histoiy even of Spain or Portugal. We have 
the following testimony in Hume's Appendix to his ac- 
count of the reign of James I. " What chiefly renders 
the reign of James memorable, is the commencement of 
the English colonies in America ; colonies established on 
the noblest footing that has been known in any age or na- 
tion." 

" Speculative reasoners, during that age, raised many ob- 
jections to the planting those remote colonies ; and foretold, 
that, after draining their mother country of inhabitants, they 
would soon shake oiF her yoke, and erect an independent go- 
vernment in America." 

In the excellent article on the British colonies, of Postle- 
thwayt's Universal Dictionary of Trade, there is a more par- 
ticular statement to the same effect. 

*• It is cei'tain that from the very time Sir Walter Raleigh, the father of 
our English colonies, and his associates, first projected these establishments, 
the7"e have been persons wlio have found an interest in misrepresenting or 
lessening the value of them. When the intention of improving tliese distant 
countries, and the advantages that were hoped for tiicreby, were first set 
forth, there were some who treated them not only as chimerical, but as dan- 
gerous : They not only insinuated the uncertainty of tlie success, but the de- 
populating the nation. Tliese, and other objections, flowing cither from a 
narrowness of understanding or of heart, have been disproved by experience,'* 
&c. 8ic. I 

"'!"he difficulties which will always attend such kind of settlements at the 
beginning, proved a new cause of clamour; many malignant suggestions 
were made about sacrificing so many Englisjimen to the obstinate desire of 
settling colonies in countries, which produced very little advantage. But, as 
these difficulties were gradually surmounted, those complaints vanished. No 
sooner were those lamentations over than othei-s arose in their stead ; when 
it could no longer be said that the colonies were useless, it was alleged tliat 
they were not useful enough to their mother coiuitry ; that while we M^ere 
loaded with taxes they were absolutely free; that the planters lived like 
princes, while the inhabitants of England laboured hard for a tolerable sub- 
sistence This produced customs and impositions on plantation commodi- 
ties," &c. &c. 

Within little more than a generation after the commence- 
ment of the plantations, the royal government anxiously began 



MERCANTn^E JEALOUSY. 

those formal inquiries into theirpopulation and manufactures, SK( 
which were so often renewed until the period of our revolt, ^^' 
and of which the results, as to manufactures, served to place 
the jealousy that provoked them in a ludicrous and pitiable 
light. In the reign of Charles I. commissioners were depu- 
ted to ascertain the growth and dispositions of New England : 
And we find her agent in London, in the time of Cromwell, 
informing one of his constituents, that, even then, there were 
not wanting many in England, to whom her privileges were 
matter of envy, and who eagerly watched every opportunity 
of abridging her political liberties and faculties of trade. 
Besides emissaries of the description just mentioned, the 
ministry of Charles II. despatched spies to watch over the 
conduct and views of the royal governors in America*. From 
the same motive, printing presses were denied to the planta- 
tions. We are told by Chalmers, that " no printing press was 
allowed in Virginia ;" that " in New England and New York 
there were assuredly none permitted ^^"^ and that " the other 
provinces probably Avere not more fortunate."* When An- 
dros was appointed by James II. captain-general of all the 
northern colonies, he was instructed '' to allow of no printing 
press." In an official report of Sir William Berkelev, gover- 
nor of Virginia, dated 20th June, 1671, there is the follov/ing 
characteristic passage : — '' I thank God we have no free 
schools, nor any printing ; and I hope we shall not have them 
these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience, 
and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulg- 
ed them and libels against the best government : God keep 
us from both." Accordingly, every effort was made to shut 
out the pestilent tree of knowledge. On the appointment of 
Lord Effingham to the government of Virginia, in 1683, he 
was ordered, agreeably to the prayer of Sir William Berke- 
ley, " to allow no person to use a printing press on any oc- 
casion whatever." 

The erect port, and firm tone, of the legislature of the infant 
Massachusetts, not only filled the cabinet of Charles II. with 
alarm for the metropolitan sovereignty, but actually overawed 
them, so as to prevent the measvires of repression which would 
otherwise have been pursued ; and to maintain the province 
in the license of action necessary for its prosperity. Curious 
and remarkable evidence on these heads is extant in the Me- 



Political Annals of the United Colonies, chap. 15. 



POLITICAL kXD 

moirs of Evelyn,* who was one of the council of Charles II. 
His language deserves to- be quoted. 

"The 6th of May, 1670, I went to council, where was produced a most 
exact and ample information of the state of Jamaica, and of the best expe^ 
dients as to JVInu England, on which There was a long debate ; but at length 
'twas concluded that if an)', it should be only a conciliating' paper at first, or 
civil letter, till we had better information of ye present face of thinsfs, since 
■we understood tlietf -were a people almost upon the very brink of renouncing any 
dependence on ij^ croivn.'" — Vol. i. p. 415. 

"The first thing we did at our next meeting, was to settle the form of a 
circular letter to the governors of all his Majesty's plantations and territo- 
?'ies in the West Indies and Islands thereof, to give tliem notice to whom 
they should apply themselves on all occasions, and to render us an account 
of their present state and government, but what -re most insisted upon luas, to 
know the condition of JVeiv England, which appearing to be nery independent a& 
to their rei^ard to Old England, or his ^Majesty, rich and strong as they now were, 
there were great debates in what style to wi-ite to them ; for the condition 
of that colony was such, that they were able to contest with all other plan- 
tations about tlicm, and there was fear of their breaking from all dependence on 
this nation.''^ — Ibid. 

" The matter in debate in council on the od of August, 1671, was, whether 
■we should send a deputy to \ew England, requiring them of the Massachu- 
setts, to restore such to their limits and respective i)osses.sions as had peti- 
tioned the council ; this to be the o])en commission only, but in truth witk 
secret insti^ictions to informe the council of the condition of those colonies, and 
whether they were of such power as to be able to resist his JllatU' and declare 
for themselves as independent of the crowne, which we were told, and which of 
late years made tliem refraclorie. Coll. Middleton being called in, assur'd 
us they might be cnrb'd by a few of his Mntys first rate fregats, to spoile 
their trade with the Islands ; buttho'mv Lo : President was not satisfied, the 
rest were, and we did resolve to advise his Maty to send commiss'rs with a 
formal commission for adjusting boundaries, &c. with some other instruc- 
tions." — p. 417. 

" We deliberated in council, on the 12th of JanY, 1672, on some fit per- 
son to go as commisser to inspect their actions in J\''ew England, and from time 
to time report how that people stood afii?cted." — p. 423. 

When the real amount of the " riches and strength, and 
the power to resist," mentioned in these extracts, is traced 
in the returns made from New England at the era in ques- 
tion, it is difficult to think of the apprehensions of the Brit- 
ish court, with any degree of seriousness. 

2. The fisheries, shipping, and foreign West India trade of 
the colonies had scarcely become perceptible, before the Brit- 
ish merchants and West India planters caught and sounded 



• A work of a very interesting cast in all respects, published in London 
in 1818, in 2 vols, quarto. The article drvott d to it in the Quarterly Ke-. 
view has, no doubt, made the most of my readers acquainted with its general 
, character. 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 

the alarm. As soon as the colonists, in the progress of wealth SE^ 
and population, undertook to manufacture, for their own con- ^^' 
sumption, a few ai-ticles of the first necessity, such as hats, 
paper, &c. a clamour was raised b}^ the manufacturers in 
England, and the power of the British government exerted 
to i-emove the cause of the complaint. The Discourse on 
Trade, of Sir Josiah Child, a work published in 1670, but 
written in 1665, and long considered as of the highest 
authorit}', expresses, in the passages which I am about to 
quote, the prevailing opinions of the day. " Certainly it is 
" the interest of England to discountenance and abate the 
*' number of planters at Newfoundland, for if they should in- 
" crease, it would in a few years happen to us, in relation to 
" that country, as it has to the fishery at New England, which 
*' many years since was managed by English ships from the 
" Avestern ports ; but as plantations there increased, it fell to 
" the sole employment of people settled there, and nothing of 
" that trade left the poor old Englishmen^ but the liberty of / 
" carrying now and then, by courtesy or purchase, a ship load 
" of fish to Bilboa, when their own New English shipping are 
" better employed, or not at leisure to do it." 

" New England is the most prejudicial plantation to this 
" kingdom. — I am now to write of a people, whose frugality, 
" industry and temperance, and the happiness of whose laws 
" and institutions, promise to them long life, with a wonderful 
" increase of people, riches and power; and although no men 
'' ought to envy that virtue and wisdom in others^ xvhich them- 
*' selves either can or zuill not practise, but rather to commend 
"and admire it; yet I think it is the duty of every good 
*' man primarily to respect the welfare of his native country ; 
" and therefore, though I may oflfend some whom I would 
" not willingly displease, I cannot omit in the progress of 
" this discourse, to take notice of some particulars, wherein 
" Old England suffers diminution by the growth of the colo- 
" nies settled in New England."* * ^' 

" Of all the American plantations, his majesty has none so 
" apt for the building of shipping as New England, nor any 
" comparably so qualified for tlie breeding of seamen, not only 
'* by reason of the natural industry of that people, but princi- 
" pally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries ; and in 
" my poor opinion, there is nothing more prejudicial, and in 
*' prospect more dangerous to any mother kingdom, than the 
" increase of shipping in her colonies, plantations, or pro- 
" vinces," &c. — Chap. 10. 

Illustrations of the spirit testified in these extracts, 



POLITICAL AND 

r I. from Child, may be collected from the work of Joshua 
'^^te.' Gee, " On the Trade and Navigation of Great Britain," pub- 
lished at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and also 
held in great estimation. This writer proposed plans " for 
making the plantation trade more profitable to England, by 
strengthening the act of navigation," but suggested, at the 
same time, the expediency of suffering some of the planta- 
tion commodities to be carried directly to the straits of the 
Mediterranean. He thought it necessary too, toassignmany 
reasons why the " plantations" neither sought nor could ac- 
quire independence. The following passages are from his 
thirty-first chapter. 

" But before I proceed to show the great advantage those additional ma- 
terials would be to carry on the aforesaid manufactures, 1 think proper to 
take notice of an objection made by some gentlemen, which is, that if we 
encourage the plantations, they will grow rich, and set up for themselves, 
and cast off tlie English government." 

" I have considered those objections a1)U7idance of times, the oftener I 
think of them, the less ground I see for such doubts and jealousies" 

" It must be allov.'ed, New England has shewn an vncommon stijfhess. We 
think, however, all judicious men, when they come to examine thoroughly 
into their fears, will see they are groundless ; and that as it seems impossi- 
ble for the other colonies to joyn in any such design, so nothing could be 
more against their own interest : For if New England should ever attempt 
to be independent of this kingdom, the stopping their supplying the sugar 
islands, and coasting and fishing trade, would drive them to the utmost dif- 
ficulties to subsist as aforesaid ; and of consequence the part they have in 
tliat trade would fall into hands of other colonies, which would greatly in- 
crease their riches. But if some turbulent spirited men should ever be ca- 
pable of raising any defection, a small squadron of hght frigates would en- 
tirely cut off" their trade, and if that did not do, the government would be 
forced, contrary to their practice, to do what other nations do of choice, viz. 
place standing forces among them to keep them in order, and oblige them 
to raise money to pay them. We do not mention this with any apprehension 
that ever they will give occasion, but to shew the consequences that must 
naturally follow." 

" Some persons who endeavour to represent this colony in the worst light, 
would persuade us they would put themselves under a foreign power, ra- 
ther than not gratify their resentments," Sec 

" Now as people have been filled with fears, that the colonies, if en- 
couraged to raise rough materials, would set up for themselves; a little re- 
gulation would remove all those jealousies out of the way, as aforesaid," 

KC. 

"It is to be hoped this method would allay the heat that some people 
have shewn (without reason) for destroying the iron works in the planta- 
tions, and pulling down all their forges ; taking wway in a violent manner, 
their estates and properties, preventing the husbandmen from getting their plough 
shares, carts, or other utensils inended ; destro3'ing the manufacture of ship 
building, by depriving them of the liberty of making bolts, spikes, or other 
tilings proper for carrying on that work ; by which article, returns are 
made for purchasing woollen manufactures, which is of more than ten times 
the profit that is brought into this kingdom by the exports of iron maim- 
fatJtures." 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 

"The present ag'e is so far unacquainted with the cause of the increase of SEC 
our riches, that the}- rather inten-upt than encourage it, and instead of en-s^r-« 
larging-, lay hold of some smuU trifiing thing's, which they think may touch 
their private interest, rather tiian promote the general g-ood; and if they think 
any commodity from the plantations interferes with something- we have 
at home, some hasty step is taken to prevent it ; so tiiat for the sake of 
saving a penny, we often depi-ive ourselves of tilings of a thousand times 
the value." 

The report made in 1731, at the command of the British 
parliament, by the Board of Trade and Plantations, concern- 
ing the " trades carried on, and manufactures set up, in the co- 
lonies," betrays much disquietude, and recommends that, 
" some expedient be fallen upon to direct the thoughts of the 
colonists from undertakings of this kind ; so much the rather, 
because these manufactures in process of time, maybe carried 
on in a greater degree, unless an early stop be put to their pro- 
gress." The report carefully notes that in New England " by 
a paper mill set up three years ago, they make to the value of 
£200 sg-. yearly.'''' The measures adopted by the parliament in 
1732 and 1733, were symptomatic of the morbid sensibility 
common to all classes of politicians as well as traders. By 
the act " for the better securing and encouraging the trade 
of his majesty's sugar colonies in America," the interests 
of New England were sacrificed to those of the sugar plan- 
ters. 

The petition of Rhode Island and Providence, against the 
sugar colony bill, occasioned a debate in the House of Com- 
mons in 1733, some parts of which deserve to be copied as 
interesting in a double point of view. 

" Sir John Barnard moved for leave to bring up the petition. — " 

" Sir Wm Yonge said, I must take notice of one thing which 1 have ob- 
served in the petition. They therein tell us, that as to the bill now depending 
before us, they apprehend it to be against their charter This, I must say, is 
something very extraordinary; and in my opinion, looks very like aiming at 
an independence, and disclaiming the authority and jurisdiction of this House, 
as if this House had not a power to tax them, or to make any law^ for the 
regulating the afiairs of their colonies ; therefore if there were no other rea- 
son for our not receiving the petition, on this single account I should be 
against it." 

" Mr. Winnington — I hope the petitioners have no charter which debars 
this House from taxing them as well as any other subjects of this nation. I am 
sure they can have no such charter." 

"Sir John Barnard alleged that the language of the petitioners was 'that 
they humbly conceive, that the bill now depending, if passed into a law, 
would be highly prejudicial to their charter.' It may be that this House has 
sometimes refused to receive petitions from some parts of Britain, against 
duties to be laid on ; but this can be no reason why the petition I have now in 
my hand should be rejected. The people in every part of Britain have a re- 
presentative in this House, who is to take care of their particular interest — and 
they may, by means of their representative in this House, offer what reasons 
they think proper against any duties to he laid on. Bat the people who are 
VOL. I, B 



POUTICAL AND 

the present petitioners, have no particular representatives in this House, 
therefore, they have no other way of applying or ofiering" their reasons 
to this House, hut in the wav of bein;^ heard at the bar of the House, 
by their agent here in England. Therefore, the case of this petition is an 
exception " 

"The question being p<it for bringing up the petition, passed in the nega- 
tive " — C Parliamentary History. J 

The trade of the northern colonies with the foreign West 
India Islands, would have been totally prohibited, according 
to the prayer of the sugar planters, had not the parliament 
apprehended distant consequences, of a nature incompatible 
with the general British policy as to France.* The spirit of 
the legislation under review, is strikingly exemplified in the 
law of 1732, to prevent the ' exportation of hats out of the 
' plantations in America, and to restrain the number of ap- 
' prentices taken by the hat makers, in the said plantations, 
* &C-' So also, in the act of 1750, prohibiting, under severe 
penalties, the erection of any slitting-mill, plating-forge, or 
furnace for making steel, Sec. Heavy complaints were made 
in Great Britain, that the people of New England "not satis- 
fied with carrying out their own produce, had become carriers 
for the other colonies." The injustice of the restraints im- 
posed or solicited, may be understood from the circumstance 
that New England had no staple to exchange for the British 
manufactures. " Hats," says the Account of the European 
Settlements,! " are made in New England, which in aclan- 
*' destine way, find a good vent in all the other colonies. The 
" setting up this, and other manufactures, has been, in a great 
" measure, a matter necessary to them ; for, as they have not 
*' been properl}^ encouraged in some staple commodity by 
*' which they might communicate with their mother country, 
" while they were cut ofT from all other resources, they must 
" either have abandoned the country, or have found means of 
" employing their own skill and industry to draw out of it the 
*' necessaries of life. The same necessity, together with 
" their convenience for building and manning ships, has 
" made them the carriers for the other colonies." 

New England, Massachusetts particularly, was constantly 



* See Account of the European Settlements in America, vol. ii. p. 179. 
Moreover, according to the same authority, " The northern coloTties de- 
clared, that if they were deprived of so great a branch of their trade, it 
must necessitate them to the establishment of manufactures. For, if they 
were cut oft' from their foreign trade, they never could purchase in Eng- 
land the many things for the use or tlie ornament of life, which they have 
from thence, 5cc." 

-f Ibid, p. 175. A.D. 1757. 



MEUCANTILE JEALOUSY. 

arraigned and threatened, for contempt of the act of naviga-SE< 
tion, and the subsequent regulations of a like purport, al-v«^ 
though, by the confession of the board of trade itself, in its 
reports, nature left them no alternative but disobedience, or a 
long and feeble infancy. These restraints, — those relating 
to manufactures, at least, were as unnecessary, as vexatious 
and unjust. Our experience since the separation, has demon- 
strated the extravagance of the apprehensions of the mother 
country, when referred to New England at the beginning of 
the last century. The selfishness must have been extreme, 
the jealousv exquisite, which generated the phantoms of an 
independent empire and rival manufactures in that quarter, 
at so early a period. The opinions of Adam Smith, concern- 
ing the British legislation generally, in the case of the Ame- 
rican colonies, carry with them an authority not to be resist- 
ed, and belong especially to an exposition, such as the one in 
which I am engaged. I am the more strongly tempted to 
adventure upon pretty copious extracts from the seventh 
chapter of his fourth book, in which he particularly treats of 
that legislation, since most of our domestic historians, inat- 
tentive to the cry, if I may be allowed the phrase, of the 
very facts which they relate, talk volubly of the " wise and 
liberal policy," of Great Britain.* 

" The policy of Europe has very little to boast of, either In the original 
establishment, or so fur a.s concerns their internal government, in the subse- 
quent ]jrosperity of the colonies of America." 

" P'oUy and ii^justice seem to have been the principles which presided 
over, and dii'ected the fii-st project of establishing those colonies; the folly 
of hunting- after gold and silver mines, and the injustice of coveting the pos- 
session of a country whose hannless natives, fir from having ever injuretl the 
people of Europe, had received the first adventurers with every mark of 
kindness and hospitahty." 

"The adventiu'crs, indeed, who formed some of the later establishments, 
joined to the chimerical project of finding gold and silver mines, other mo- 
tives more reasonable and more laudable ; but even these motives do very 
little honour to the policy of Europe." 

" The English Puritans, restrained at home, fled for freedom to America; 
and established there the four governments of New England The English 
Catholics, treated with much greater injustice, established that of Maryland ; 
the Quakers, that of Pennsylvania, &c. he." 

" The government of England contributed scarce an)' thing towards ef- 
fectuating the establishment of some of its most important colonies in North 
America " 

" When those establishments were effectuated, and had become so con- 
siderable as to attract the attention of the mother country, the first regula- 
tions which she made with regard to them had always in view to keep to 
herself the monopoly of their commerce ; to confine their market, and to 
enlarge her own at their expense, and coiisecjuenily rat/ier to dainp mid dis- 

• See liamsay — Colonial History, chap. 1. 



POLITICAL AND 

I. courage, than to quicken and fonvard the course of their prosperity. In the 

^^ difPerent ways in wiiich this monopoly lias been exercised, consists one of 

tlie most essential differences in the policy of the different Eiirojiean nations 

with ref^'ard to their colonics. TJie best of them all, that of England, is only 

some^vhat less illiberal and oppressive than that of any of the rest." 

"England purchased, by some of her subjects who felt uneasy at home, 
a great estate in a distant countrj'. The price indeed was ve^y small, 
and instead of thirty years purchase, the ordinary price of land in the 
})resent times, it amounted to little more than the expense of the dif- 
ferent equipments which made the first discovery, reconnoitered the 
coast, and took a fictitious possession of the country. The land was good 
and of great extent, and the cultivators having plenty of good ground 
to work upon, and being for some time at liberty to sell tlieir produce 
where they pleased, became, in the course of little more than thirty or 
forty yearr,, (between 1620 and 1660) so numerous and thriving a people, 
that the sliop-keepers and other traders of England, wished to secui'e 
to themselves the monopoly of their custom Without pretending, 
therefore, that they had paid any part, either of the original purchase 
money, or of the subsequent expense of improvement, they petitioned the 
parliament that the cultivators of America might, for the future, be con- 
fined to their shop ; first, for buying all the goods w hich they wanted 
from Europe ; and, secondly, for selling all such parts of their own 
produce as those traders might find it convenient to bh-n, for they did not 
find it convenient to buy every part of it. Some parts of it imported 
into England might have interfered with some of the trades which they 
themselves canned on at home. Those particular pans of it, therefore, 
they were willing that the colonists should sell where they could ; the 
farther off the better ; and, upon that account, proposed that their market 
should be confined to the countries south of Cape Finisterre. A clause 
in tlie famous act of navigation established this truly shop-keeper proposal 
into a law." 

" The maintenance of this monopoly has hitherto been the principal, or 
more properly, perhaps, the sole end and purpose of the dominion which 
Great Britain assumes over her colonies. It is the principal badge of their 
dependency, and it is the sole fruit which has hitherto been gathered 
from that dependency. "Whatever expense Great Britain has hitherto laid 
out in maintaining this dependency, has really been laid out in order to sup- 
port this monopoly." 

"While Great Britain encourages in America the manufactures of pig 
and bar iron, by exempting them from duties, to which the like commodi- 
ties are subject, when imported from any other country, she imposes an 
absolute prohibition upon the erection of steel-furnaces and slit-mills in any 
of her American plantations. She will not suffer her colonies to work in 
those more refined manufactures even of their own consumption ; but insists 
upon their purchasing of her merchants and manufacturers all goods of this 
kind which they have occasion for." 

" She prohibits the exportation from one province to another by water, 
and even the carriage by land on horseback or in a cart, of hats, of wools 
and woollen goods, of the produce of America ; a regulation which effec- 
tually prevents the establishment of any manufacture of such commodities 
for distant sale, and confines the industry of her colonists in this way 
to such coarse and household manufactures, as a private family generally 
makes for its own use, or for that of some of its neighbours in the same 
province." 

" To prohibit a great people, hoiuever, from making all that they can of every 
part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in t/te 
ivay that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 

most sacri'd rights of mankivd. Thoiig'h they had not been prohibited from SE 
estiiMIshiiig- such niamifactures, yet in their present state of improvement, ^^ 
a regard to their own interest would, probably, have pi-evented them from 
doing so. In their present state of improvement, those proliibitions, per- 
haps, without cramping their industry, or restraining it from any employ- 
ment to which it would liave gone of its own accoi'd, are only imperti' 
nejit badges of slavery, imposed upon them, without any sufficient reason, 
bt/ the groundkss Jcalousi' of the merchants and many fictii vers of the mother 
counlry " 

" Of the greater part of the regulations concerning the colony trade, the 
merchants who carry it on, it must be observed, have been the principal 
advisers. We must not wonder, therefore, if, in the greater part of them, 
their niteresthas been more considered than either that of the colonies or 
that of the mother countiy. In their exclusive privilege of supplying the « 
colonies with all the goods whicli they wanted from Europe, and of pur- 
chasing all such parts of their surplus produce as could not intei-fere with 
any of tlie trades whicli they themselves carried on at home, the interest of 
the colonies was sacrificed to the interests of those merchants." 

" If the whole surplus produce of Amei'ica in grain of all sorts, in salt pro- 
visions, and in fish, had been put into the enumeration, and thereby forced 
into the market of Great Britain, it would have interfered too much with 
the produce of the industry of our own people. It was probably not so 
much from any regard to the interest of America, as from a jealousy of this 
interference, that those important commodities have not only been kept out 
of the enumeration, but that the importation into Great Britain of all grain, 
except rice, and of all salt provisioas, h;is, in the ordinary state of the law, 
been prohibited." 

" The non-enumerated commodities could originally be exported to all 
parts of the world. Lumber and rice having been once put into the enu- 
meration, when they were afterwards taken out ol it, were confined, as to 
the European market, to the countries that lie south ot Cape Finisteri'C. 
By the 6th of George III. c. 51 all non-enumerated commodities were sub- 
jected to the like restriction. The parts of Europe which lie south of Cape 
Pinisterre, are not manufacturing countries, and we were less jealous of the 
colony ships carrying home from them any manufactures which could inter- 
fere with our own." 

3. As the plantations advanced in numbers, strength, 
wealth, and mantifactures, they awakened a still mdre lively- 
distrust, and jealotis vigilance in the mother country. In 
iriJ, a bill was brought into the House of Commons to abo- 
lish all the charter governments ; against which tyrannical 
project, the agent of Massachusetts, Diunmer, ptiblished an 
elaborate and masterly pamphlet. One of the sections of his 
" Defence of the New England Charters," is headed thus, — 
" The objection that the charter colonies Vv-ili grow great and 
formidable, answered :" — and the author details with mttch 
anxiety, the circumstances which, in his opinion, established 
the probability of the reverse. He begins his argument with 
stating, " There is one thing I have heard often urged against 
" the colonies, and indeed, it is what one meets from people 
" of all conditions and qualities. 'Tis said, that their increas- 
*' ing numbers and wealth, joined to their great distance from 



POLITICAL AND 

' I. " Great Britain, will give them an opportunity, in the course 
■^ " of some years, to throw off their dependence on the nation, 
" and declare themselves a free state, if not curbed in time. 
" I have often wondered to hear some great men profess their 
*' belief of the feasibleness of this, &c."* The House of 
Commons continued, as may be seen, from the portion given 
above of their debate of 1733, on the petition from Rhode 
Island, to be tremblingly alive on this point. It displayed 
its sensibility even in a more marked way, a few years after- 
In 1740, it voted, upon the complaint preferred by the 
J general court of Massachusetts, against governor Belcher, 
for denying to them the disposal of the public monies,— 
" That the complaint, contained in the New England 
*' memorial and petition, was frivolous aud groundless ; an 
" high insult upon his majesty's government, and tending to 
" shake off the dependencv of the said colony upon this 
" kingdom, to which, by law and right, they are and ought to 
" be subject." W^henthe general court ventured to censure 
one of their agents, Mr. Dunbar, for giving evidence before 
parliament on the bill for the better securing the trade of the 
sugar colonies, the House of Commons voted, nera. con.— 
" That the presuming to call any person to account, or pass a 
censure upon him ; for evidence given by such person before 
that House, was an audacious proceedings and an high viola- 
tion of the privileges of that House." 

The fate of the Albany plan of union, familiar to the me- 
mory of all who have read our history, affords additional 
proof of the temper which it is m)' object to illustrate. A 
confederacy of the colonies for the purpose of defence against 
the French and Indians, was at first instigated by the British 
government ; but it could tolerate no arrangements except 
such as were incompatible with their liberties. It finally pre- 
ferred leavingjthem exposed to the most formidable dangers, 
and itself to the cost and trouble of their protection, rather 
than acquiesce in any scheme of coalition, in the execution 
of which, they might, to use the language of Franklin, 
*' grow too military, and feel their own strength. "| In the 
pamphlet which this great statesman published, in 1760, 
to show the impolicy of restoring Canada to the P'rench, there 
is a section allotted to the question, "whether the American 
colonies were dangerous in their nature to Great Britain." He 
found it necessary, on every occasion, when an advantage 
was sought for them, to set in formal array, all the considera- 

• Page 7o. 

f See Meraoics af Eranklin, p. 142, American edition. 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY, 

tions which pleaded against the bare supposition, of their SE 
being disposed or able, to effect their independence. ^«> 

To lessen the danger, or obviate new hazards, for her 
sovereignty and monopoly, England embraced the policy, 
of confining the settlements in North America as much as 
possible to the sea coast. The great points of preventing 
the French power from being immoveably established at 
their back, and over the whole vast interior ; of securing 
the Atlantic provinces not only from this evil, but from 
their cruel scourge — the Indians ; of opening the fruitful 
and beautiful countries beyond the Apalachian mountains 
to English cultivation and empire, were all postponed to 
riews, of which it is difficult to say whether they were more 
selfish or short-sighted. The plan of a colony on the Ohio, 
for the salutary and noble purposes just enumerated, was 
conceived in America in the middle of the last century, 
submitted fruitlessly to the British government in 1 768, and 
offered anew by Dr. Franklin, in 1770, with the engagement 
on the part of the projectors, to be at the whole expense of 
establishing and maintaining the civil administration of the 
country to be settled. A few extracts from the two Reports* 
of the Board of Trade and Plantations, on the subject, to 
the Lords of the privy council, will explain the favourite 
system in relation to the plantations. 

" The proposition of forming inland colonies in America is, we humbly 
conceive, entirely new : it adopts principles in respect to American settle- 
ments, different from what have hitherto been the policy of this kingdom, 
and leads to a system which, if pursued through all its consequences, is, in 
the present state of that country, of the greatest importance." 

" And first with regard to the policy, we take leave to remind your lord- 
ships of that principle which was adopted by this Board, and approved and 
confirmed by his majesty, immediately after the treaty of Paris, viz. the 
confining the western extent of settlements to such a distance from tlie sea 
coast, as that those settlements should lie tuithin the reach of the trade and 
commerce of this kingdom, upon which the strength and riches of it depend; 
and also of the exercise of that authority and jurisdiction, which was con- 
ceived to be necessary for the preservation of the colonies, in a due subor- 
dination to, and dependence upon, the mother country ; and these we appre- 
hend to have been ttoo capital objects if his majesty' b proclamation of the 7th 
of October, 1763, by which his majesty declares it to be his royal will and 
pleasure, to reserve, under his sovereignty, jirotection, and dominion, for 
the use of the Indians, all the lands not included within the three new go- 
vernments, the limits of which are described therein, as also all the lands 
and territories lying to the westvvard of the sources of the rivers whicli 
shall fall into the sea from the west and north-west, and by which all 
persons are forbid to make any purchases or settlements whatever, or to 
take possession of any of the lands above reserved, witliout special license 
for that purpose." 

* Fourtlji vol. Franklin's Works, article Ohio Settlement, 



POLITICAL A!^D 

*' Tlie same principles of policy, in reference to settlements at so great a 
I distance from the sea coast as to be out of the reach of all advantageous 
intercourse with this kingdom, continue to exist in their full force and spirit ; 
and though various propositions for erecting n<nv colonics in the interior parta 
of ./iinerica h.ar^ been, in consequence of this extension of the. bonndury iine^ mh' 
viitted to the consideration of government, (particularly in that part of the 
country wherein are situated the lands now prayed for, with a view to that 
object;) yet the dangers and disadvantages of complying' with such proposals 
have been so obvious, as to defeat every attempt made for can7ing them into 
execution." 

"The effect of the policy of this kingdom in respect to colonizing Ame- 
I'lca, in tliose colonies where there has been sufficient time for that effect to 
discover itself, will, we humbly apprehend, be a very strong ai-gument against 
forming settlements in the interior country ; more especially when every 
adviintage derived from an established goveriuiient would naturaliy tend to 
draw the stream of population; fertility of soil, and temperature of climate, 
offering superior incitements to settlers, ivho, exposed to fcxv hardships, and 
stmggling -u'iih fetv difficulties, coidd, u-ith little laborer, earn an abundance for 
their oiun~vantB, but ■without a possibility of supplying ours leith any considerable 
tfuanfiiies." 

" Admitting that the settlers in the country in question are numerous as 
report states them to be, yet we submit tliat this is a fact which does, in the 
nature of it, operate strotigly in point of ai gument against what is proposed — 
for if the foreg-oing reasoning has any weight, it certainly ough to induce you 
to advise his majesty to take every method to check the progress of these 
settlemejits, and not to make such gi'ants of land as will have an immediate 
tendency to encourage them." 

The language of the roval servants of North America 
was of the same tenor with that of the Lords of Trade. 
The coiTimander in chief of his majesty's forces there, wrote 
in 1 769, to lord Hillsborough, who presided over the colo- 
nial department ; — 

" As to increasing the settlements to respectable provinces, and to coloni- 
zation in general terms in the remote countries, I conceive it altogetlier in- 
consistent with sound policy. I do not apprehend the inhabitants could have 
any commodities to barter for manufactures, except skins and fui-s, which 
will naturally decrease as the country increases in people, and the deserts 
are cultivated; so that in the course ofa few years, necessity would force 
them to provide manufactin-cs of some kind for themselves; and when 
all connexion upheld by commerce with the mother country shall cease, it 
may be expected that an independency in her government will soon follow. 
The laying open new tracts of fertile country in moderate climates might 
lessen the present supply of the commodities of America, for it is the pas- 
sion of every man to be a landholder, and the people have a natural disposi- 
tion to rove in search of good land, however distant." 

The governor of Georgia, above named, is quoted with 
gi-eat deference by the Lords of Trade, as having written to 
them thus : 

" This matter, my lords, of gTanting large bodies of land in the back parts 
of any of his majesty's nortliern colonies, appears to me in a very serious and 
alanning light; and I humbly conceive, may be attended with the greatest 
and worst of conscqiiences; foj', my lords, if avast territory be granted to 
any set of gentlemen, who really mean to people it, and actually do so, it 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 

THUst draw and cany out a great number of pcopl e from Great Britain; and SE( 
I appreiiend, they will soon become a kind of separate and independent \^ 
people, who will set up for themselves; that they will soon have man\ifac- 
tures of their own, &c. in process of time, they will become formidable 
enough to oppose his majesty's authority," &c. 

It is curious, and demonstrative of the sense commonly 
entertained of the views of the British government, that 
some of the advocates for the project of interior settlements, 
insisted, that such establishments would serve as a check 
upon attempts, on the part of the old colonies, to become 
independent, by draining them of their population. There 
is, in fact, much plausibility in the suggestion, which is 
made in one of the memorials on the subject, of the year 
1767 — that of general Lyman. " The period will doubtless 
•' come, when North America will no longer acknowledge a 
*' dependence on any part of Europe. But that period 
" seems to be so remote, as not to be at present an object of 
" rational policy or human prevention, and it will be ren- 
" dered still more remote by opening new scenes of agri- 
*' culture, and widening the space which the colonists must 
*' first completely occupy."* 

I shall not be considered as going wide of my subject, if I 
advert here, to the fact, that the British government has pur- 
sued, with respect to India, a policy similar to that recom- 
mended in the foregoing extracts, in relation to North Ame- 
rica. I need only appeal to the authority of Mills, who, in 
his " History of British India," uses this emphatic language. 
" If it were possible for the English government to learn wis- 
*' dom by experience, which governments rarely do, it might 
" at last see, with regret, some of the effects of that illiberal, 
" cowardly, and short-sighted policy, under which it has taken 
" the most solicitous precautions to prevent the settlement of 
" Englishmen ; trembling, forsooth, lest Englishmen, if al- 
" lowed to settle in India, should detest and cast off its yoke!" 

" It is wonderful to see how the English government, 
*' every now and then, voluntarily places itself in the station 
" of a government existing in opposition to the people, a go- 
" vernment which hates, because it dreads 'the people, and 
" is hated by them in its turn. Its deportment with regard 
" to the residence of the Englishmen in India, speaks these 
" unfavourable sentiments with a force which language 
" could not easily possess."! 

The Edinburgh Review, in quoting the first of these parg- 

• See Macpherson's Annals of Commerce. Quarto Ed. v«l, iii. 469. 
f B. 6. vol. iii. p. o34, 336. 

VOL. 1. .e 



POLITICAL AND ^ 

/J' graphs, affects, indeed, to doubt whether " the obstructions 
^**' " which have been thrown in the way of colonization in In- 
" dia, have arisen mainly irom the idea that another nation of 
" Englishmen would spring up there, who might take upon 
" them to govern themselves ;" and it cannot admit that " any 
*' Englishman would be base enough not to wish to see another 
" America arise at a distance, which might relieve Britain 
** from the fear of her rivalityy^ But no one that has read 
the masterly work of the historian whom I have just cited, 
will hesitate between his opinions on the subject, and those 
of any anonymous critic ; and there is a corroborative cir- 
cumstance too notorious to be questioned : I mean the at- 
tempt sanctioned in the same quarter, to prevent the diffusion 
of Christianity among the Hindoos, from an apprehension of 
danger to the British power. f I am myself unable to devise ' 
a juster, or stronger commentary upon the policy towards the 
North American colonies, than is furnished in the following 
general observation of the Edinburgh critics, in allusion to 
the case of India. "We cannot conceive any thing more 
" discreditable to a government, than to place itself in oppo- 
" sition to a measure, conducive, and almost essential to the 
*' prosperity of a great empire, merely because it would be 
" attended with a chance, at some distant period, of a cur- 
" tailment of the extent of its dominions." 

It is not easy to forget that at the commencement of the ne- 
gociations at Ghent, in 1814, a policy was betrayed by the Bri- 
tish government, in the demands of its commissioners, touch- 
ing a new Indian boundary, akin to that which di scountenanced 
the plan of the Ohio settlement. Nor ought we to forget the 
eloquent condemnation of the pretension of 18 14, pronounced 
by Sir James Mackintosh, in the House of Commons, a con- 
demnation equally due to his majest}'^'s proclamation of the 
7th October, 1763, and to the system of the Lords of Trade. 
" The western frontier of North American cultivation is the 
** part of the globe in which civilization is making the most 
*' rapid and extensive conquests on the wilderness. It is the 
*' point where the race of man is the most progressive. To 

• No. 61. 

f See the " Christian Researches in Asia," of the Rev. Claudius Buchanan.— 
The V Titer adduces a letter to himself, dated May 14, 1806, from Watson, 
Bishop of Llandaff, which contains the following passage : " Twenty )-ear^ 
and more have now elapsed, since in a sermon before the House of Lords, I 
hinted to the government the propriety of paying regard to the propagation 
of- Chi'istianity in India; and I have since then, as fit occasion offered, pri- 
vately, but unsuccessfully, pressed the matter on the consideration of those 
in power." 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 

i'jfbrbid the purchase of land from the savages, is to arrest the SEC 
"progress of mankind. — More barbarous than the Norman "-^ 
V tyrants, who afforested great tracts of arable land for their 
H,sport, ministers attempted to stipulate that a territory quite 
"as great as the British islands, should be doomed to an eter- 
"nal desert. They laboured to prevent millions of fi-eemen and 
"Christians from coming into existence. To perpetuate the 
V^ English authority in two provinces^ a large part of North 
" America was for ever to be a wilderness. The American ne- 
" gociators,by their resistance to so insolent and extravagant a 
*' demand, maintained the common cause of civilized men."* 

4. Emigration to the colonies proved, from the outset, a 
subject of alarm for the mother country. Her apprehension 
from it was two-fold ; of her own depopulation, and the trans- 
lation and decline of her manufactures. 

"The barbarism of our ancestors," says the author of the 
European Settlements in America, " Could not comprehend 
" how a nation could grow more populous by sending out a 
" part of its people. We have lived to see this paradox made 
" out by experience, but we have not sufficiently profited of 
*' this experience ; since we begin, (in 1757,) some of us at 
" least, to think that there is a danger of dispeopling ourselves, 
" by encouraging new colonies, or increasing the old." 

Precautions were taken against too great an efflux from the 
kingdom to America, even in the time of James I, and were 
renewed on several occasions in that of his successor. The 
circumstance is noticed by Hume in the following terms : — 
" The Puritans, restrained in England, shipped themselves 
1* off for America, and laid there the foundations of a go- 
"<-vernment, which possessed all the liberty, both civil and 
^'religious, of which they found themselves deprived in their 
"native country. But their enemies unwilling that they 
^'should any where enjoy ease and contentment, and dread- 
*' ing, perhaps, the dangerous consequences of so disaffected 
*' a colony, prevailed with the king to issue a proclamation, 
" debarring these devotees access even into those inhospita- 
" ble deserts."! 

In 1637, a proclamation was issued by Charles I, "to re- 
*' strain the disorderly transporting of his majesty's subjects 
"to the colonies without leave;" and in 1638, another, 
" commanding owners and masters of vessels, that they do 
" not fit out any with passengers and provisions to New 

• Speech on the Treaty with America — April, 1815. 
t Chapter 52. 



POLITICAL AND 

r I- " England, without license from the Commissioners of Plan- 
'^^ " tations." One incident of the operation of this interdict 

has attracted the notice of all the historians, and is thus 

strikingly told by Robertson. 

" The number of the emigrants to America drew the attention of go- 
vernment, and appeared so formidable, that a proclamation was issued, pro- 
hibiting masters of ships from caiTving passengers to New England, without 
special permission On many occasions this injunction was eluded or dis- 
regarded. Fatally for the king, it operated with full effect in one instance. 
Sir Arthur Haslerig, John Hampden, Oliver Cromwell, and some other per- 
sons, whose principles and views coincided with theirs, impatient to enjoy 
those civil and rehgious liberties, which they struggled in vain to obtaai in 
Great Britain, hired some ships to carry them and their attendants to New 
England. By order of council, an embargo was laid on these when on the 
point of sailing; and Charles, far from suspecting that the future revolutions 
in his kingdoms were to be excited and directed by persons in such an 
humble sphere of life, forcibly detained tlie men destined to overturn his 
throne, and to terminate his days by a violent death."* 

Towards the close of the seventeenth century, the alarm of 
depopulation, and trans-atlantic manufactures, from the re- 
moval of British subjects to the colonies, had increased, and 
become the theme of much political speculation. Sir Josiah 
Child thought it necessary to investigate minutely the realitj' 
of the danger, and devoted to the question a considerable 
section of his work on Trade. Some few of his phrases will 
explain the state of the case. " Gentlemen of no mean ca.- 
" pacities are of opinion, that his majesty's plantations 
*' abroad, have very much prejudiced this kingdom by draiu- 
" ing us of people.** I do not agree that our people in Eng- 
*' land are in any considerable measure abated, by reason of 
"our foreign plantations. This, I know, is a controverted 
*' point, and I do believe, that where there is one man of my 
" mind, there may be a thousand of the contrary," &c.f Child 
argued the question upon the true principles of political econ- 
omy, and among other particular views gave the following :— 
" I do acknowledge, that the facility of getting to the planta- 
" tions, may cause some more to leave us than would do, if 
" they had none but foreign countries for refuge : but then, if 
*' it be considered, that our plantations spending mostly our 
" English manufactures, and those of all sorts almost imagi- 
" nable, in egregious quantities, and employing nearly two- 
*' thirds of all our English shipping, do therein give a con- 
*' stant sustenance to it, may be 200,000 persons here at 
" home ; then I must needs conclude, upon the whole matter. 



* Fouitli vol. tlistory of America. 
I Chapter 10. 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 

" that we have not the fewer, but the more people in Eng- SE 
^ land, by reason of our English plantations in America."* ^^ 
• Notwithstanding the complete refutation of the error by 
this and other liberal writers, lively alarms continued to 
recur. We find the political economists of England engaged, 
in 1756, and at later periods, before and after the American 
revolution, in warm controversies respecting the decline of 
the British population, from various causes, emigration in- 
cluded. f The government acted uniformly upon the receiv- 
ed prejudice. The Lords of Trade, in the official report of 
1770, which I have quoted above, refer to the doctrine also 
quoted, of the governor of Georgia, in the following terms: — 
*' And there is one objection suggested by governor Wright, 
*^to the extension of settlements in the interior country, 
" which, we submit, deserves your lordship's particular at- 
" tention, viz. the encouragement that is thereby held out to 
*' the emigration of his majesty's subjects; an argument which, 
"in the present peculiar situation of this kingdom, demands 
"very serious consideration, and has for some time past had 
" so great weig-ht zvith this Board^ that it has induced its to 
" deny our concurrence to many proposals for gra7its of land^ 
" even in those parts of the continent of America^ zvhere^ in 
** other respects^ we are of opinion^ that it consists with the 
^^ true policy of the kingdom to encourage settlements P 

On the recognition of our independence, the panic respect- 
ing emigration returned, in England, with double violence. 
Nothing short of complete depopulation, from the tempta- 
tions which the seeming natural advantages, or the designing 
legislation, of the new republic might offer to his majesty's 
liege subjects, was apprehended by the privy council of the 
home department. Lord Sheffield set himself at work to 
medicate the imagination of his countrymen, by depicting 
this land as one of multifarious wretchedness, and in al- 
most the last stage of atrophy. He represented emigration 
as the resource only of the culprit, and of those who had 

* Chapter 10. 

\ To discourag"e it, the device was early employed, which has been so 
often resoi-ted to, in relation to the United States. The following title of 
a work, which appeared in the mother country in 1753, will explain vvhat I 
mean : " America dissected ; being a tnie and full account of all the Ame- 
rican Colonies: shewing the intemperance of the climates; badness of mo- 
ney ; danger from enemies; and the danger to the souls of the poor peo- 
ple tliat remove thither, from the heresies that prevail there. By a Rev. 
Divine of tlie Church of England, Missionaiy to America, and D. D. — Pub- 
lished as a caution to unsteady people, •u.-Jio may be tempted to leave their native 
(Oimtrii/' 



POUTICAL AND 

l" I. made themselves the objects of contempt. "" America would 
i"^^ prove the bane of all others ;" " not above one emigvnnt hijive^ 
to that covmtry, succeeded so as to settle a family ;" " the bet- 
ter sort of them were begging about the streets of Philadel- 
phia ; Irishmen went there to become slavea to negroes^^'' &c.* 
Expedients more effectual than this phantasmagoria, were 
adopted by the government, particularly in 1794, in the shape 
of prohibitory laws. We had a remarkable instance of its 
feeling in 1817, in the act of parliament of that year, by which 
British and foreign vessels were allowed to carry passengers 
from Great Britain and Ireland to the United States, in the 
proportion of one passenger only to every five tons, whereaSr 
the British vessels were pei-mitted to convey them to other 
Countries in the proportion of one for every two tons. 

The government of England would seem, at this time, to 
have relapsed into that particular " barbarism of our ances- 
tors," mentioned in the quotation from the European Settle- 
ments. The report of the parliamentary proceedings for May, 
1818, furnishes the following paragraph : — " In answer to a, 
*' question of a member from a manufacturing town, respect- 
" ing the increased progress of emigration, lord Castlereagh 
" replied that it was the earnest object of government to termi- 
" nate this most mischievous evil^ and that they were meditating 
"means for this purpose." I have had already occasion to 
notice some of the means which appear to have been medi- 
tated by his lordship ; but in looking at the British statute 
book and the repository of orders in council, I find it diffi- 
cult to conjecture what means could be contrived in the nature 
of penal regulation, in addition to those already provided at 
different eras in the British history. The transportation of 
machinery is still punishable with death. On the 6th of Feb- 
ruary, 1817, lord Lauderdale made his lament in the House of 
Peers, that the law interfered to prevent a poor artisan from 
leaving his country, and transferring his industry elsewhere; 
and that persons who attempted to export machinery were sub- 
jected to capital punishment. We have recently seen these 
*' poor artisans" stealingtheir way at double expense to the sea 
ports of France in order to escape thence with impunity to 
the only country which holds out to them the probability of a 
tolerable lot. The statute book and ministry lag behind even 
the Quarterly Review in illumination on this subject, if we, 
may judge from this passage, of the number of that Jour- 
nal, for April, 1816 : — ^" It is vain to imagine, that im- 

* See Observations on the Commerce of the United Statesi-bv John Lorifl 
Sheffield, ir84.— p. 190, 96. 



MERCATiTTiLE JEALOUSY. 

^ provements in machinery can, for any length of time, be SE( 
*• confined to the country in which they are invented; and at- ^^^ 
'*^tempts to prevent manufacturers from emigrating, by penal 
**' statutes, are not only oppressive, but inefficacious." 
' The historians relate, that the acts of Charles I, restraining 
emigration, " increased the murmurs and complaints of the 
"people, and raised the cry of double persecution, to be 
" vexed at home, and not suffered to seek peace abroad.'''' This 
cry is again heard in England, after a lapse of nearly two cen- 
turies, and that jealousy which, in part, furnished the caus6 
for it at the earliest period, has now a larger share in its pro- 
duction with a still greater certaintj?^ of disappointment. 

Nothing remains for the British government, but to pur- 
sue the course which Ovid has indicated as the reproach of 
the Argives among the nations of antiquity. 

— Prohlbent discedere leges 
Pjenaque mors posita est patriam miitare volenti. 

5. The reduction of the fortress of Louisbourg, in 17'45, 
by the colonial troops, — the twenty-five thousand soldiers 
whom the colonies furnished and maintained in the war of 
1755, — the four hundred privateers fitted out in their ports 
during the same period, to cruise against French property, — 
the large sums which they advanced, beyond their fair pro- 
portion, to the military chest, — the considerable aids in men 
and provisions, which they sent to the West Indies, — the im- 
portant, principal share which they had in the overthrow of 
the French power in North America, and in the consequent, 
unexampled glory and aggrandizement of England, — these 
splendid efforts and services, of which I propose to speak 
particularly hereafter, extorted annual thanks from the Bri- 
tish parliament, and encomiums from the ministry : But they 
awakened no real gratitude, and won no solid marks of fa- 
vour. The old jealousy was irritated; and a keener cupidity 
excited, by such supposed evidences of power and wealth : 
The design so long formed of discharging upon the colonies 
a part of the load of taxation under which Britain groaned, 
and of fastening a military yoke upon their necks, was only 
confirmed and ripened, by tiieir generous and excessive ex- 
ertions for the triumph of the mother country over her great 
rival. This effect was quickly visible in the stamp-act of 
1764; and the scheme of subjugation, though intermitted for 
a moment was soon made evident by the revival of that act, 
and the train of desperate attempts upon the liberties and 
spirit of the colonies, which the Declaration of Independence 
Iwis engraven on the memory of every American. 



POLITICAL AND 

I. The vie%vs and dispositions of the British ministry, from the 
^ year 1 765^ until the sword was drawn, and during the struggle, 
belong more particularly to another section of this volume. 
They are, indeed, so well known, as scarcely to call for illus- 
tration from history. It is alike notorious and confessed^ 
that the majority of the British nation partook in them, and 
finally consented to the recognition of American independ- 
ence, not from any change of feelings, but from momentary 
exhaustion and discouragement. As the determination of the 
colonies toresortto arms, became apparent, and after the rup- 
ture was complete, the jealousy of dominion and monopoly, 
and the dread of future rivalry, heightened into rage, and 
no longer restrained by immediate interest, were vented in 
every variety of passionate and resentful expression. *' I 
" must maintain," said a ministerial leader in the House 
of Lords, in the debate of the 26th October, 1775, on the 
king's speech, " that it would have been better that America 
*' had never been known, than that a great consolidated em- 
*' pire should exist independent of Great Britain." Gover- 
nor Johnstone, and his colleagues of the opposition, cried 
shame upon "the ignoble jealousies daily uttered in Parlia- 
ment against the Americans," — just as an orator of the House 
of Commons found himself, in 1812, compelled to exclaim 
and protest against " the perpetual jealousy of America."* 
One of the passages which I have selected from the Edin- 
burgh Review, to place at the head of this work, relates a 
fact, which may be said to speak volumes to the same pur- 
port. It were endless, and it is not within my present aim, 
to recount the demonstrations of this feeling particularly as 
respects trade and navigation, given by England since her 
acknowledgement of our independence. Nor do I think 
it necessary to prove further her habitual temper, by 
quoting her conduct towards another of her dependencies — 
Ireland — whose strength, trade and manufactures were so 
long and cruelly oppressed and crippled, while her domestic 
character and history were so grossly misrepresented and 
traduced. f 



* Mr. Brougham's Speech on tlie Commerce and Manufactures of Great 
Britain. 

fSee a victorious work recently published in this country, and entitled 
Vindicice Hibevnictje, by Mathew Carey, Esq. — The sagacious and patriotic 
writer ought to pursue his well laid train of detection. The subject is not 
without attraction for Americans in general: and for Irishmen and the de- 
scendants of Iri.slimen, it has the deepest imterest. 



S5 



SECTION II. 

OF THE GENERAL CHARACTER AND MERITS OF THE 
COLONISTS. 

1. I HAVE said that England is the particular mother coun- SE( 
tr}^, which might have been expected to be most tender of the \^ 
ffeelings and character of her colonies, out of a due regard to 
justice, gi-atitude and her own interests, as well as from the 
sympathies of blood, and the dictates of an enlarged philan- 
thropy. This is a proposition, from which no candid' man, 
acquainted with the history of the American continent, is 
likely to dissent, and which can be fully sustained by draw- 
ing upon the English writers. It is my intention to quote } 
principally their acknowledgments in favour of the origin 
and character, and, as regards Great Britain, of the services 
and dispositions, of the North American colonies. An il- 
lustration of these points by such testimony, will set in a 
stronger light the injustice and folly of the sarcasms and | 
contumelies, which have been directed against the Ame- ' 
ricans from the same quarter. 

" There are few states," says the Quarterly Review,* 
" whose origin is on the whole so respectable as the Ameri- 
" can — none whose history is sullied with so few crimes. 
" The Puritans who had fled into Holland to avoid intoler- 
" ance at home, carried with them English hearts. They 
" could not bear to think that their little community should 
" be absorbed and lost in a foreign nation : they had forsaken 
" their birth place and their family graves ; but they loved 
" their country, and their mother tongue, and rather than 
*' their children should become subjects of another state, and 
" speak another language, they exposed themselves to all the 
" hardships and dangers of colonizing in a savage land. 
" No people on earth may so juHtlij pride themselves on their 
*' ancestors as the New En glanders!''' lu 

Although it has been repeated with great complacency, in 



• 4th Numbci" — Review of Holmes' Annals. 

Vol. L^D 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

r I. the work just quoted, that the Adam and Eve of the colonies 
"^^ came out of Newgate^ yet it has been admitted not only in 
, England, but nearly throughout Europe, that the first set- 
tlers, and all the European generations of British America, 
were, in every respect, more worthy of esteem and encou- 
ragement, than those of the other parts of this continent. 
The Quarterly Review itself,* has drawn a comparison 
which is every way to my purpose. 

" The orig-inal settlers from England, in North America, were for the 
most part, an austere, fi-ugal, and industrious people, — the hardships and 
privations of their early establishments, were not endured with the inspiring 
feelings of military adventurers, but borne with the patience of religious 
submission : the purity of their morals, tinged with no small portion of the 
fanaticism which caused their emigration, kept them from jiromiscuous in- 
tercourse with the female Indians ; and hence an unmixed race was conti- 
nued, among whom there was no distinction of cast or complexion, to in- 
troduce a difference, or political contention. As no great inequality ofpro- 
perty, the principal cause of political power, existed, there was no great 
inequality of education among those born in the country; none were so 
destitute of knowledge as the mass of the laboiious in most countries of 
Europe." 

" Comparing the population of Spanish with that of British America, we 
shall, at every step, be struck with the wonderful difference in origin, in 
progress, and in present situation. The conquerors from Spain, instead of 
the frugal, laborious, and moral description of our English settlers, partook 
of the ferocity and superstition of an earlier and less enlightened period. 
The warrioi"s v/ho had exterminated the Mahomedanism of Granada, were 
readily induced to propagate their own religion by the sword. As few or no 
women accompanied the first settlers of South America, their intercourse 
with native females produced a race of successors of a most anomalous cha- 
racter, and these in a few generations, mixing with the slaves imported fi'om 
Africa, still further increased the different classes, who, in process of time, 
more by the rules of society than by the influence of the laws, assumed a va- 
riety of ranks, according to their greater or less affinity to the white race. 
The education of the lower orders in South America, has been totally ne- 
glected." 

In the list of English authors who, although not exempt 
from gross errors of opinion, display a laborious study and 
discriminating knowledge of the formation and character 
of the settlements on this continent, I may safely class Mr. 
Brougham, distinguished also among the writers of the 
Edinburgh Review, and among the leading statesmen of the 
British Parliament. In his excellent work on Colonial Policy, 
he has advanced and successfully maintained, doctrines con- 
cerning the thirteen British colonies, some of which deserve 
to be set apart for our history. I shall avail myself of them 
as the occasion offers. To begin with the following passages. 



July, 1817, Article on Spain and her Colonies. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 

*''The first settlers of all the colonies, were men of irreproachable cha- SEC 
racters ; many of them fled from persecution ; others on account of an ^^^ 
honourable poverty ; and all of them with their expectations limited to 
the prospect of a bare subsistence, in freedom and pence. All idea of 
wealth or pleasure was out of the question. A set of men more con- 
scientious in tlieir doings, or simple in their manners, never founded 
any commonwealth. It is indeed the peculiar glory of North America, 
that, with a very few exceptions, its empire was oi-iginally founded in charity 
and peace."* 

'■ The new emigrants who, at various times, continued to flock to this 
extensive country, as it became open and improved, were not of the same 
description as the first settlers. They were of a various race, of different 
ranks, but chiefly needy men ; of different sects, but of no perceptible re- 
ligion ; and of different nations, in whicli, however, the English greatly 
predominated. Some of them were persons of desperate fortunes and dis- 
solute characters. No combination of circumstances can be figured, tocon- 
trib'ite more directly to the reformation of the new cultivators' character 
and manners, than that which was found in the situation of the North Ame- 
rican colon!es.""|- 

" The mixture of various population was, by the influence of those sim- 
ple manners, which are formed by an agricultural life, soon blended into 
one nation of husbandmen, whose character has communicated itself, in a 
great degree, to the most profligate of those, whom compulsion or des- 
pair from time to time introduced. While the purity of manners was in 
this way preserved, that firmness of principles in religion and politics was 
maintained, which had so eminently contributed to the establishment of 
colonies. Sentiments of freedom might find an asylum in America, when 
even in Switzerland it should no longer be lawful to think beyond the rules. "•{• 

The " Account of the European Settlements in America," 
published in London, in the middle of the last century, and 
ascribed to Edmund Burke, has always possessed a great 
and deserved authority. It holds the following language, 
besides much more in the same strain, to which I may here- 
after advert. 

" The Puritans established themselves at a place which they called New 
Plymouth They were but few in number; they landed in a bad season; 
and they were not at all supported but from their private funds. The 
winter was premature, and terribly cold. The country was. covered with 
wood, and afforded very little for the refresliment of persons, sickly with 
such a vo3'age, or for the sustenance of an infant people. Near half of them 
perished by the scurvy, by want, and the severity of the climate ; but they 
who survived, were not dispirited with their losses, nor with the hardships 
they were still to endure ; supported by the vigour which was then the cha- 
racter of the Englishmen, and by the satisfaction of finding themselves out 
of the reach of the spiritual arm, they reduced this savage country to yield 
them a tolei-able livelihood, and by degrees a comfortable subsistence. This 
little establishment was made in the year 1621. It was in the year 1629, 
that the colony began to flourish in such a manner, that they soon became 
a considerable people. By the close of the ensuing year tliey had built four 
towns, Salem, Dorchester, Charlestown, and Boston, which has since become 
the capital of New England." 

" Their exact and sober manners proved a substitute for a proper subor- 
dination, and regular form of governmeat, which they had for some tinie 

* Book I, Section I. f Ihidtr- 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

r I. wanted, and the want of which, In such a country, had otlierwlse been felt 
„^^ very severely. The people, by their being generally freeholders, and 
by tyieir form of government, acquired a very free, bold, and republican 
spirit." 

" The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in the space of about seventy 
years, from a beginning of a few hundreds of refugees and indigent men, 
has grown to be a numerous and flourishing people ; a people, v^-ho from a 
perfect wilderness, have brought their territory to a state of great cultiva- 
tion, and filled it with wealthy and populous towns ; and who, in the 
midst of a fierce and lawless race of men, have preserved themselves 
ivith unarmed hands and passive principles, by the rules of moderation and 
justice, better than any other people has done bv policy and arms." — Vol.ii. 
p. 196. 

The " Political Annals of the United Colonies, by George 
Chalmers," are remarkable for authentic and ample details, 
and were published in the course of our revolutionary- 
war, under the auspices of the British government. The 
author displays throughout, the design of discrediting the 
American cause, particularly the pretensions of New Eng- 
land. He is a witness whom I shall often produce, and 
whose evidence, when given in favour of the colonies^ is 
entitled to especial weight, not only on account of his politi- 
cal aims and prejudices, but from the strength of his under- 
standing, the nature of the records to which he had access, 
and the diligence of his researches. Of the settlement of 
New England he speaks thus : — 

" When New Plymouth consisted only of two hundred persons, of all 
ages and sexes, it repulsed its enemies, and secured its borders with a gal- 
lantry worthy of its parent country, because it stood alone in the desert, 
witliout the hope of aid." — p. 494. 

"Though religious matters engaged much of the attention of the first 
planters in Massachusetts, they seem to have been extremely industrious in 
temporal afiairs. All their laws had a natural tendency to exclude luxurv, 
and lo promote diligence. When the civil wars commenced, they had al- 
ready planted fifty towns and villages ; they had erected upwards of thirty 
churches, and ministers' houses; and they had improved their plantations to 
a high degree of cultivation." 

" At the same time that these colonists (the people of New England) 
very prudently preferred the blessings of peace, they were not afraid of the 
disasters of war. They easily repelled an unprovoked attack of the neigh- 
bouring Indians with a becoming bravery. They soon after made a peace 
with that people, which does equal honour to their justice and good sense: 
and 'hey long enjoyed aU the blessings of a government conducted at once 
with prudence and vigour." — p. 89. 

" Notwithstanding the long train of public disputes with the mother coun- 
try. New England flourished prodigiously. She promoted successfully the 
operations of agriculture, she augmented her manufactures, and extended 
her commerce, and she acquired wealth and population in proportion to the 
greatness of all these ; because the rough hand of oppression had not 
touched the labours of the inhabitants, or interrupted the freedom of their 
pursuits." — p. 416. 

2. The composition of the first settlements, particularly that 
of Virginia, w^s early, and continues to be, the theme of 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

much raillery, and serious accusation. The coarse jest, SEC 
which I have before noticed, has been receiv'ed and treated ^<^^ 
in England as an historical fact.* Yet, nothing is better 
established, than that the Puritans by whom New England 
was originally inhabited, and successively replenished, were 
not only such in their moral character and domestic habits, 
as they are described in the quotations I have made, but, for 
the most part, men of substance, and of a respectable rank 
in life. In the year 1630, ten ships were sent to Massachu- 
setts from England, with several hundred passengers, many 
of whom, says Macpherson, in the second volume of his An- 
nals of Commerce, were ^^ persons of considerable fashion!''* 
The leader of the congregation of dissidents, who founded 
the new commonwealth at Plymouth, in 1620, is described, 
even by the enemies of his sect, " as a person of excellent 
parts, and of a most learned, polished, and modest spirit." — 
And it is impossible to read the terse and touching language 
used by those virtuous exiles, in applying to their intolerant 
countrymen for a patent, without acknowledging, that they 
must have been of a superior cast of mind in all respects. — 
*' They were well weaned from the delicate milk of their 
" country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange land : 
*' They were knit together in a strict and sacred bond, by 
*' virtue of which they held themselves bound to take care of 
" the good of each other, and of the whole : It was not with 
"them as with other men, whom small things could discour- 
*' age, or small discontents cause to wish themselves at home 
"again," &c. &c. ^ 

It is accurately stated by Ramsay,|that the first settlers of 
New England in general, had been educated at the English 
Universities, and were imbued with all the learning of the 
times; that not a few of the early emigrant ministers possessed 
considerable erudition; and that numbers of clergymen of this 
description, came over nearly together, in consequence of the 
parliamentary act of uniformity, passed in 1662, when upwards 
of two thousand Puritan ministers were, in one day, ejected 
. — ___ — ^ ^ 

* " The Americans are the modern Jews, possessing all the qualities ot 
the ancient, under difterent masks. They pervade eveiy country on the 
face of the earth, and with the phrases of liberty, morality, and religion, they 
deceive the most wary, and the most hypocritical. Mr. Fox has had ample 
experience of the tribes of Israel ; let him beware of the refined and com- 
plicated cunning of that race, -whose Adam and Eve emigratedfrom JS'^ivgate." — 
Critical Review, tliird series, vol. iii. 1806. 

"The Americans are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for 
any thing we allow them, short of hanging.— Dr. Johnson — ap. IlosweU, 
vol. ii. 

t ColoniaJ Civil History, p. 2o5. 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

I. from their livings in England.* The Massachusetts planta- 
"^-^ tion may be considered as the parent of all the other settle- 
ments in New England. There was no emigration from the 
mother country to any part of the continent northward of 
Maryland, except to Massachusetts, for more than fifty 
years fi'om the birth of this colony. f 

Among the one hundred and five adventurers who sailed 
from England with captain Newport, in 1607, and founded 
Jamestown, in Virginia, several officers of high family con- 
nexions, and of much personal distinction, are designated 
by the historians. The first accession of females to the 
Virginia settlement, may be cited by the Virginian of the 
present day, without a blush for his lineage. " In order," 
says Chalmers, "to settle the minds of the colonists, and to 
induce them to make Virginia their place of residence and 
continuance, it was proposed to send thither one hundred 
maids, as wives for them : ninety girls, ' joung and uncor- 
rupt,' were transported in the beginning of the year 1620; 
and sixty more, ' handsome and recommended for virtu- 
ous demeanour,' in the subsequent year.:}:" Robertson is 
still more particvdar in noticing the respectability of these 
females. The descent from mothers of this character, is 
at least as reputable as from the " maids of honour" of 
the court of Charles II — and the fathers who reclaimed 
the wilderness and built up a free state, transmitted a 
blood which might be deemed as pure and noble, as any that 
runs in the veins of the progeny of the debauched and venal 
parasites of that monarch. We are told by Robertson,^ 
that, in the time of the Commonwealth, m.any adherents to 
the royal party, and among these, some gentlemen of good 

* Hume notices this transaction, in his History, in the foUowing' terms : 
" However odious Vane and Lambert were to the Presbyterians, tliat party 
liad no leisure to rejoice at their condemnation. The fatal St. Bartholomew 
approached ; the day, when tlie clergy were obliged by the late law, either 
to relinquish their livings, or to sign tlie articles required of them, declaring 
their assent to every thing contained iji the Book of Common Prayer, &c. 
A combination had been entered into by the more zealous of the Presbyte- 
rian ecclesiastics, to refuse the subscription; in hopes that the bishops would 
not dare at once to expel so great a number of the most pojiular preachers. 
The king, himself, by his ii-rcsolute conduct, contributed, either from design 
or accident, to increase this opinion. Above all, the terms of subscription 
had been made very strict and rigid, on pui'pose to disgust all the zealous and 
scrupulous among the Presbyterians, and deprive them of their liviiigs. 
About two thousand of the clerg)' in one day relinquished their cures ; and, 
to the great astonishment of the court, sacrificed their interest to their reUg^iovs 
tenets." — Chapter 63. 

•f- Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts — Preface. 

t Page 46. 

■§ History of America, vol. Iv. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

Jiimilles, in order to avoid danger and oppression, to which SEC 
they were exposed in England, or in hopes of repairing their *>'^' 
ruined fortunes, resorted to Virginia. Lord Clarendon bears 
testimony to this fact in his History of the Rebellion. " Out 
of confidence in Sir William Berkeley, the governor of Vir- 
ginia, who had industriously invited many gentlemen and 
others thither, as to a place of security, which he could de- 
fend against any attempt, and where they might live plenti- 
fully, many persons of condition, and good officers in the 
war, had transported themselves with all the estate they had 
been able to preserve."* Chalmers may be quoted to a si- 
milar purport, and to the general character of the early Vir- 
ginians. " The instructions of Charles I, gave large tracts 
"■ of land to individuals, men of consideration and wealth, 
" who roused by religion, or ambition, or caprice, removed 
" to Virginia, and the population of that colony had increas- 
" ed to about twenty thousand souls at the commencement 
" of the civil wars." — p. 125. 

" The Virginians being animated by timely supplies from 
*' England, displayed a vigor in design and action, which 
*' men, when left to themselves amid dangers, never fail to 
" exert. They rejected the timid counsels of those, who ad- 
" vised them to abandon their settlements, and retire to the 
" eastern shore of the Chesapeake. They not only resisted 
*' the attacks of their implacable enemies, but with the ac- 
" customed bravery of Englishmen, pursued them into their 
" fastnesses. And now, for the first time, the aborigines re- 
" ceded from the rivers, and from the plantations around ; 
" leaving their opponents ii^ possession of the territories that 
*' their swords had won." — p. 63. 

If we turn to Maryland, we may appeal to the same author 
with equal confidence. 

"The first emigration to Marylaiid, consisting of about two hundred gen- 
tlemen of cmisiilerable fortune and rank, with their adlierents, who were com- 
posed chiefly of Roman CathoHcs, sailed from England in November, 1632." 

" Tlie Roman Catholics, unhappy in their native land, and desirous of a 
peaceful asylum in Maryland, emigrated in considcraljle numbers. Lord Bal- 
timore laid the foundation of his province upon the broad basis of security to 
property, and of freedom in religion; granting" in absolute fee lifty acres of 
land to every emigrant ; establishing Christianity agreeably to the old com- 
mon law, of which it is a part, without allowing pre-emiiicncc to any particu- 
lar sect." — p. 208. 

" In order chiefly to procure the assent of the freemen cf Maryland to a 
body of laws which the proprietary had transmitted, Calvert, the governor. 



* A^ol. iii. p. 706. 



CHARACTER AND MERltS 

I. called a new assembly in 1637-8. But, rejecting these with a becoming spirit^ 
^- they prepared a collection of regulations, which demonstrate equally their 
good sense and the stale of their affairs" — p. 211. 

"The assembly of Maryland endeavoured, with a laudable anxiety, to 
preserve the peace of the church; and though composed chiefly of Roman 
Catholics, it adopted that measure, which could alone prove absolutely suc- 
cessful. The act v.iiich it passed, ' concerning religion,' recited, ' that the en- 
forcement of the conscience had been of dangerous consequence in those 
counti'ies wherein it had been practised.' And it enacted, that no persons be- 
lieving in Jesns Ch'ist shall be molested in respect of their religion, or in the free 
exercise thereof , or be compelled to the belief or exercise of any other reli- 
gion, against their consent ; so that they be not unfaithful to the proprietary, 
or conspire not against the ci\al government : that persons molesting any 
other in respect of his religious tenets, shall pay treble damages to the party 
aggrieved, and twenty shillings to the proprietary. That those reproaching 
any -uiith opprobrious names of religious distijiction, shall forfeit ten shillings to 
the persons injured." — p. 218. 

Maryland derived a part of her population from the other 
provinces. The Puritans persecuted by the established 
church in Virginia, the Quakers oppressed by the synod 
of Massachusetts, and the Dutch expelled from Delaware, 
sought and found a generous protection, and entire freedom 
of religious worship, in the Roman Catholic colony. New 
York was first settled by the Dutch, at the time when they 
had jiist shaken off the yoke of Spain ; when they display- 
ed national energies and virtues of the highest order, and 
pursued a more liberal and enlightened policy, with respect 
to civil liberty, religion, and trade, than any other people of 
Europe. The emigrants from Holland to North America, 
brought with them, the characteristic industry and sobriet)^, 
the tolerant spirit and sound economics, of the commercial 
republic. The original population of New Jersey was com- 
posed of Swedes and Hollanders, and of emigrants from the 
northern colonies : That of Pennsylvania needs not be cele- 
brated by a reference to the parent state. The common- 
wealth which the wise and humane associates of Penn, the 
laborious, frugal, and orderly Germans, and the intelligent, 
active, and generous Irish, formed and brought to beauty 
and solidity, in so short a time, is a monument, eloquent 
enough in itself; a creation, upon which no European writer 
has looked steadily, without bursting into expressions of ad- 
miration. Even the austere loyalty of Chalmers, is relaxed 
by it, and the following emphatic testimony extorted from, 
his convictions. 

" As a supplement Xo t\\e frame of government for Pennsyh'ania, there 
was published a body of 'laws agreed upon in England by the Adven- 
turers,' which was intended as a greaf charter. And it does great honour to 
their wisdom as statesmen, to their morals as men, to tlieir spirit as colonists. 
A plantation reared on such a seed-plot, coidd not fail to g^rew up with 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

rapiclitv, to advance fast to maturity, to attract tlie notice of tlie world." — Si,\^' 
p. 643.' Si"''.,< 

" The numerous laws, which were enacted at thefirstsettlcment of Penn- 
sylvania, wliich do so much honour to its good sense, display the principles 
of the people; these legislative regulations kept them alive long after the 
original spirit begun to droop and expire. Had Pennsylvania been less 
blessed by nature, siie must have become flourishing and great, because it 
was a principle of her great charter, ' that children should be taught some 
usel'ul trade, to theend that none may be idle, but the poor may work to 
live, and the rich, if they become poor, may not want.' I'liat country must 
become commercial, which compels factors, wronging their employers, t(t 
make satisfaction, and one-third over; which subjects not only the good's, 
but the lands of the debtor, to the payment of debts; because it is the 
credit given by ail to all, that forms the essence of traffic. We ought natu- 
rally to expect great internal order when a fundamental law declares, that 
every thing ' which excites the people to rudeness, cruelty, and irreligion, 
shall be discouraged and severely punished.' And religious conlroversj- 
coi-.id not disturb her repose, when none, acknowledging one God, and 
living peaceably in society, could be molested for his opinions or his prac-. 
tice, or compelled to frequent and maintain any ministry whatsoever. To 
the regulations which were thus established as fundamentals, must chiefly 
be attributed the rapid improvement of this colony, the spirit of diligence, 
order and economy, for which the Pemisylvanians have been at all times so 
celebrated." — p. 643. 

Swedes and Fins, a simple and virttious race of men, 
opened the soil of Delaware, and were joined by the Dutch, 
and by emigrants of different nations, from the neighbouring 
provinces. New England, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, 
gave the first inhabitants to the Carolinas. In consequence 
of the revocation of the edict of Nantz, a multitude of 
French Protestants of the most respectable families, es- 
tablished themselves in South Carolina. These were fol- 
lowed, at different intervals, bv numbers of their own coun- 
trymen, and of Germans and Swiss professing the same re- 
ligious tenets. The character of the French settlers has 
been recently pourtrayed by a young American, in a lan- 
guage which I am proud to quote, as a specimen of what is 
produced in those literary societies, whose existence even, 
the European critics would not, in all likelihood, condescend 
to notice. 

" History derives more than half its value from the moral parallels and 
contrasts, which it suggests. It is a singular coincidence of this sort, that 
between the years 1682 and 1688, at the very time that William Penn, the 
gentlest and purest of all rulers, was rendering his name for ever illustrious, 
by establishing, in America, a refuge for the wretched and oppressed of 
the whole earth ; Louis XIV, one of the most gorgeous and heartless of 
sovereigns, was delivering up three hundred thousand families of his Pro- 
testant subjects to the atrocious tyranny of the fanatical Le Tellier, and the 
sanguinary Louvois; and by bis ambition of universal empire abroad, and 
his bigotry and ostentation at home, was preparing for France those calami- 
ties which have since fallen upon her. The Huguenots were the most 
moral, industrious, and intelligent part of the French population, and when 

Vol I.— E 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

they were expelled from their native country, they enriched all Europe with 
the commerce and arts of" France. Many of the more enterprising of them, 
finding tliemselves shut out, by the narrow policy of the French court from 
Louisiana, where they had proposed to found a colony, turned their course 
to New Yoi'k and to South Carolina, where they soon melted into the mass 
of the population. 

" Certainly, we cannot wish to see perpetuated among us the old Asiatic 
and European notions of indelible hereditary excellence ; and equally wild 
are those theories of a fantastical philosophy, which would resolve all the 
intellectual and moral qualities of man into accidental physical causes. But 
surely there is a point at which good feeling and sound philosophy can 
meet, and agree in ascribing the best parts of our character to the moral in- 
fluence of a virtuous and intelligent ancestry. 

" Considering the subject in this light, we may well look back, with pride, 
to our Huguenot forefathers. The modern historians of France have rarely 
done them full justice. The decline which the loss of their industry and 
arts caused in the commerce of their own cou)itry, and the sudden increase 
of wealth and power which England and Holland derived from them, are 
sufficient proofs that their general character was such as I have described. 
Nor are they to be regarded solely as prosperous merchants, and laborious 
and frugal artisans. 

" The French character never appeared with more true lustre than it did 
in the elder protestanis. "Without stopping to expatiate in the praise of 
their divines and scholars, Calvin, Beza, Salmasius, and the younger Scaliger; 
Claude, Jurieu, Amylraut, and Saurin, nor on those. of Sully, the brave, the 
wise, the incorruptible, the patriotic; I shall only observe, that though his 
own countrymen have been negligent of his glory, and chose to rest the 
fame of French chivalry on their Dunois, their Bayard, their Du Guescelin 
and their Crillon, we may search their history in vain for a ])arallel to that 
beautiful union of the intrepid soldier with the profound scholar, of the 
adroit politician with the man of unbending* principle, of the rigid moralist 
and the accomplished gentleman, which is to be found in the life of the 
Huguenot chief, Mornai du Plcssis. 

" Many of those who emigrated to this coimtry, after the revocation of 
the edict of Nantz, were the companions, the sons, or the disciples of these 
men, and they brought hither a most valuable accession of intelligence, 
knowledge, and enterprise."* 

A considerable number of Palatines rivalling the Dutch in 
habits of industry and order, settled in North Carolina, in the 
beginning of the eighteenth century. The memorable ravages 
of war committed at that period in the countries of the 
Rhine, drove into England seven thousand of the ruined inha- 
bitants, Palatines and Suabians. Three thousand of them 
were transported to New York, and a part of these found their 
way into the other provinces. It seems incredible, yet is mat- 
ter of parliamentary record, that the expense incurred for their 
transportation, — not more beneficial to them, than to the co- 
lonies which received them — drew complaints from the Bri- 
tish House of Commons. A body styling itself the citadel of 



• An Anniversary Discourse delivered before the New York Historical So- 
ciety, December 7, 1818, by GuJian C. Verplank, Esq., 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

Protestantism, and the refuge of the victims of Catholic SE( 
bigotry, could, nevertheless, in a formal representation to ^.^ 
Queen Anne, discourse querimoniously of" the squandering 
" away great sums upon the Palatines, a useless people, a mix- 
*' ture of all religions, and dangerous to the constitution," — 
with the declaration besides, that " it held those who advised 
the bringing them over to England, as enemies to the queen 
and kingdom." How different the conduct of the unpretend* 
ing Quakers of Pennsylvania, by whom the portion of the 
wretched exiles that took shelter there, was — not defamed 
or stinted, but, according to an English writer, most kindly 
entertained and assisted !* 

The poverty and humble condition of a part of the emi- 
grants to the middle and southern provinces, constitute the 
heaviest reproach to which they are liable, if we accept, indeed, 
the circumstance, — notable in the case of Georgia, particular- 
ly — of so many of them being Scotchmen ; which forms, no 
doubt, a just subject of ridicule for the wits of Edinburgh. 
The general estimation in which our emigrant ancestors 
should be held, is proclaimed in the rapid growth, strength^ 
order, and felicity of the communities which they added to the 
British empire. The mighty difficulties which they vanquished 
— the conquests which they made over nature, and over a sa- 
vage enemy greatly exceeding them in numbers and the means 
of annoyancef — the freedom and liberality of their institutions, 
and the integrity in which those institutions were preserved — 
the solicitude and success with which they laboured to ren- 
der universal among them an acquaintance with the rudi- 
ments of learning — all these points which I propose to enlarge 
upon in the subsequent pages — demonstrate the noblest qua- 
lities ; enterprize, industry, perseverance, valour, sagacity, 
humane, and broad views, setting them plainly above the mass 
of their cotemporaries in Europe. 

The white population of Georgia consisted of only fifty 
thousand souls in the year 1775, and but forty-five years had 
then elapsed since the foundation of the colony ; yet though 
so weak, and though vulnerable and sure of^ being assailed on 
every side, she joined, in that year, the confederacy against the 
mother country. The character of her founder, general Ogle- 
thorpe, — who lived to see her independence and sovereignty- 
acknowledged — was such as to have hallowed that of the 
exiles who seconded his plans of civil government, and fought 

• Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. p. 6. 
t See Note A. 



CHARACTER AND MERItS 

f T. under his banners against the Indians and Spaniards. The 
■^i^ Oglethorpes, the Robinsons, the Penns, the Roger Williams*, 
the Smiths, the Calverts, may be placed at the head of the 
■worthies to whom Adam Smith alludes, in the following pas- 
sage of the fourth book of his Wealth of Nations. " It was 
*' not the wisdom and policy, but the disorder and injustice 
" of the European governments, which peopled and cultivat- 
" ed Ainerica. In what way, then, has the policy of Europe 
" contributed either to the first establishment, or to the pre- 
*' sent grandeur of the colonies of America? In one way, 
^' and in one way only, it has contributed a good deal. Magna 
*' virum ynater !' It bred and formed the men who were capa- 
*' ble of achieving such great actions, and of laying the foun- 
" dation of so great an empire ; and there is no other quarter 
*' of the world, of which the policy is capable of forming, or 
*' ever has actually and in fact, formed, such men The colo- 
*' nies owe to Europe the education and great views of their 
" active and enterprising founders, and some of the greatest 
" and most important of them, so far as concerns their inter- 
" nal government, owe to it scarce any thing else." . 

3. The occasional exportation to the plantations, of those 
whom the government of England chose to denominate con- 
victs, vagrants, and " dissolute persons," is the most plausi- 
ble ground for the language of contempt and derision, which 
has been so commonly indulged with respect to the original 
stock of these States. The fact taken in the broad and un- 
qualified manner in which it is usually announced, would ex- 
alt but little the generosity and justice of the mother country, 
it the character of the first and voluntary settlers be admitted 
to have been such as it appears in the foregoing pages, upon 
the testimony of the British writers. An impartial investiga- 
tion of this subject gives it, however, a different complexion 
from that which it commonly wears. 

Franklin calculated in 1751,* that there were then one mil- 
lion or upwards of English souls in North America, and that 
scarce eighty thousand had been brought over sea. Among this 
number of emigrants, not one-eighth was of the description 
mentioned above; and it is certain, from the uniform acknow- 
ledgment of history, that those who were, did not adulterate, but 
imbibed, themselves, in a great degree, the character of their 
predecessors. Numbers became, in process of time, laborious 
and orderly citizens; anxious and exemplary fathers of families. 

* Essay on Population. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 

I have quoted in p. 27, some remarks made by Mr. Brougham SEC 
in his " Colonial Policy," which bear upon the ti-ue theory of ^"^' 
this point; and I may add here from the same work, " that if 
" the convicts in the colony of New Holland, though sur- 
*' rounded on the voyage, and in the settlement, by the com- 
*' panions of their iniquities, have, in a great degree, been re- 
*' claimed, by the mere change of scene, what might not be / 
" expected from such a change as that which the transported 
"persons experienced on arriving in America?"* 

It is to be noted, that the real convicts were received by / 
the colonists not as companions, but as servants ; and if the' 
circumstance of their comparative paucity did not render 
absurd a general reproach upon our descent, it is difficult to 
conceive whv any generation in Great Britain should not be 
stigmatized in its origin, on account of the much more consi- 
derable proportion of " dangerous rogues," who remained at 
home. Chalmers tells us, that " it is to James I, that the 
" British nation and the colonists owe the policy whether sa- 
"■ lutary or baneful, of sending convicts to the plantations."— 
The excuse which this writer oifers for the British nation, 
would seem fitted to operate as efficaciously in favour of the 
colonies : — "• The good sense of those days justly considered 
" that their labour would be more beneficial in an infant set- 
*' tlement, which had an immense wilderness to cultivate, 
*' than their vices could possibly be pernicious."! 

But there are other considerations, of a nature, to render 
a Briton cautious, how he attempts to handle this topic olfen- 
sively. When we find the term, convicts used, in reference to 
the persons transported during three-foiu'ths of the seven- 
teenth century, we are not to understand it jn the opprobi- 
ous sense in which it is generally received, and was tyranni- 
cally meant to be employed. The several parties who alter- 
nately gained the ascendency in the furious struggles of that 
era, in England, oppressed and exiled, under this appella- 
tion, the objects of their political resentment, or their religi- 
ous intolerance. Chalmers even, confesses, that the only 
law which, in the time of James I, justified the infliction 
of expulsion, unknown to the common law, was the statute of 
Elizabeth, which enacted that " dangerous rogues might be 
" banished out of the realms ;" and he adds that it is probft- 
ble obnoxious men were transported agreeabl}' to the genius 
of the administration of the time — by prerogative. 

The extent of the guilty abuse and cruel hardship to which 

* Book I. Sect. P. f Chap. iii. Political Annals. 



CHARACTER AND IMERITS 

f- this assumption of power led, can be readily imagined^ from 
*^ the facility of sweeping off the obnoxious and distressed, un- 
der the denomination of vagrants, or " dangerous rogues." 
It may be worth while, in order to illustrate the point further, 
to refer to Sir Josiah Child's account of the peopling of the 
plantations, which, from its early date, carries with it a par- 
ticular authority, and which, at the same time, furnishes a 
curious picture of the miserable state of things in England 
at the epoch in question. He relates, in the first instance,* 
that Virginia and Barbadoes were partly settled by a loose, 
vagrant people, who must, if there had been no English 
plantations, have starved at home, or "else have sold them- 
*' selves for soldiers, to be knocked on the head, or starved 
*' in the quarrels of England's neighbours, as many thousands 
*''' of brave Eng-lh/uuen were, in the Low Countries, as also 
*' in the wars of Germany, France, and Sweden ; or else, if 
" they could by begging or otherwise arrive to the stock of 
*' two shillings and six pence, to waft them over to Holland, 
*' become servants, where none are refused." Then come 
the following passages : — 

" But the principal growth and increase of the aforesaid plantations of 
Virginia and Barbadoes happened in, or immediately after, our late civil 
wars, wlien the worsted party, by the fate of war, being deprived of their es- 
tates, and having some of tliem never been bred to labour, and others made 
unfit for it, by the lazy habit of a soldier's life ; there wanting means to main- 
lain them all abroad with his majesty, many of them betook themselves to 
the aforesaid plantations, and great numbers of Scots soldiers, of his majes- 
ty's arniy after Worcester fight, were, by the then prevailing powers, volun- 
tarily sent thither." 

" Another great swarm, or accession of new inhabitants, to the aforesaid 
plantations, as also to New England, Jamaica, and all others his majesty's 
plantations in the West Indies, ensued upon his majesty's restoration, when 
the former prevailing party being, by a divine hand of Providence, brought 
under, the army disbanded, many officers displaced, and all the new purcha- 
sers of public titles, dispossessed of tlieir pretended lands, estates, &c. many 
became impoverished, and destitute of employment ; and, therefore, such as 
could find no way of living at home, and some who feared the re-establish- 
ment of the ecclesiastical laws, under which they could not live, were forced 
to transport themselves, or sell themselves for a fevj years, to be transported by 
others to the foreign English plantations.** And some were of those people 
called Quakers, banished for meeting on pretence of religious worship." 

In noticing the prevalence of the practice of transportation, 
after the Restoration, Chalmers remarks, that it was probably 
upon the authority of the statute which empowered the king 
to send Quakers to the colonies.f This is the statute 13, 14, 
ch. ii. c. 1, " for preventing the dangers that may arise by 
*' certain persons called Quakers, and others refusing to take 

* Discourse on Ti^ide, chap, x, f Chap. xv. Awials. 



OP THE COLONISTS, 

*^ the lawful oaths.''* It enacted, that it should be lawful for SE 
his majesty, to cause such refractory persons to be transported ^-^ 
beyond the seas. We are informed by Hume,* that Cromwell 
caused the royalists who engaged in conspiracies against his 
government, to be sold for slaves and transported. On the 
suppression of Monmouth's rebellion against James II, those 
of his followers who escaped judicial massacre, were treated 
in the same way. Chalmers furnishes from the records of 
the plantation office in London, a letter from James to the 
governor of Virginia, which states, that the crown " had been 
" graciously pleased to extend its mercy to luany rebellious 
*' subjects who had taken up arms against it ; by ordering their 
*' transportation to the plantations ;" and which directs the go- 
vernor to propose a bill to the assembly for preventing the 
convicts, those rebellious subjects, from redeeming them- 
selvs by money, or otherwise, until the expiration often years 
at least. The assembly refused to co-operate in this scheme 
of royal vengeance, and the inhabitants of Virginia received 
the victims with a sympathy due to their situation. 

Either from a sense of the futility of expostulation, or 
from the advantage which the labour of the convicts pro- 
mised, or from a knowledge of the fact which must now be 
clear to all, that most of the persons transported were but the 
victims of misfortune, and of the tvranny or bigotry of their 
countrymen, the colonistsdidnotatfirstcondemn, nor remon- 
strate against the system of transportation. But it had not been 
pursued long after the Restoration, before open opposition was 
made. Maryland ventured even to legislate adversely, and 
drew upon herself, in consequence, the reprobation of the. 
crown lawyers, who contended that every law of the colonial 
legislature, passed to restrain a measure that was allowed and 
encouraged by acts of parliament, was void ab initio. " Whe- 
*' ther," says Chalmers, "^from the two great numbers brought 
*' into Maryland, or from an apprehension that their vices 
*' might contaminate the morals of the colonists, the introduce 
*' tion of criminals was then deemed an inconvenience: and a 
*' law was passed ' against the importation of convicted per- 
*' sons into the province,' which was continued at different 
" times, till towards the beginning of the reign, of Ai)ne."f 

The persistence of the British government in the practice 
of transporting real malefactors, after the colonies had grown 
into considerable commonwealths, and signalized themselves 
by the noblest qualities and most valuable services, was an 

• History, chap. Lsi. f Book I. chap. xr. 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

indignity, of which the impolicy must be as obvious, as the 
arrogance and ingratitude. If it could not extinguish their 
glowing loyalty, it was, however, deeply felt and resented- 
In Franklin's piece on the causes of the American discontents 
before 1768, he includes it in the listoftheir grievances, and 
employs this strong language. " Added to the evils which I 
*' have envmierated, the Americans remembered the act au- 
*' thorising the most cruel insult perhaps ever offered by one 
" people to another, that of emptying the English gaols into 
*' their settlements. Scotland, too, has within these two years 
" (in 1766) obtained the privilege it had not before, of send- 
*' ing its rogues and villains to the plantations." When the 
illustrious patriot expostulated, by the direction of his consti- 
tuents, with the British minister on this head, he was told that 
England mitsthe relieved of her moral putrefaction — and his 
laconic reply adumbrates the nature of the case. " What 
*' would you say, if, upon the same principle, we sent you our 
*' rattle-snakes." Fortunately, there was a virtue in the cha- 
racter and condition of the despised and outraged colonists, 
which secured them from the infection, and even converted 
the virus into wholesome nutriment for the state. 

4. The love of liberty and independence is the trait which, 
if any, would seem to assure to a people, the admiration and 
applause of an Englishman, pursuant to his own boasted 
principles and perpetual claims. It is impossible to deny this 
merit to the North Ameri'can colonists, even in the superla- 
tive degree : whatever doubts may be affected in relation to 
the other high titles asserted for them by their descendants. 
Hume, in noticing the commencement of their establishments, 
remarks that " the spirit of Independency which was then 
'*■ reviving in England, shone forth in America in its full lustre, 
" and received new accession of force from the aspiring 
*' character of those who, being discontented with the estab- 
*' llshed church ajid monarchy ^ had sought for freedom amidst 
" those savage deserts."* To the early settlers, as well as 
to their posterity of 1775, the well known language of Mr. 
Burke, was stricdy applicable. " In the character of the 
" Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature 
" which marks and distinguishes the whole. This fierce 
" spirit of liberty, is stronger in the English colonies than in 
" any other people of the earth."f 

* Appendix to the reign of James I. 

f Speech on ConcLliatioa with the colonies. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 

The first planters in Virginia called for arrangements of R^^C 
the most liberal character, and within fourteen years from the '^^^ 
settlement, that constitution by which they became freemen 
and citizens, was fixed in its genius and permanent forms.*' 
Freedom Avas the errand of the colonists of Plymouth and 
Massachusetts ; and these so properly styled, republican dis- 
senters^ framed accordingly, their body politic and social, 
upon principles of perfect equality. The complete organiza- 
tion of a republic in the representative form, within the same 
term after the landing at Plymouth, as that just mentioned in 
the case of Virginia, under circumstances so new and criti- 
cal, — in defiance of the adverse habits, spirit, and scheme of 
rule, which predominated in the mother country, — has drawn 
forth expressions of wonder and homage from some of the 
more liberal of the British historians. 

As the Puritans spread themselves over New England, they 
gave to the distinct communities which they established, con- 
stitutions still more democratical ; and that, although bold 
and elevated in their plans, they were not visionary or rash, 
is proved by the duration and happy eflfects of those constitu- 
tions. After relating, that on the 14th January, 1639, all the 
free planters upon Connecticut river, convened at Hartford, 
formed a system of government, and after giving the sub- 
stance of that system, the faithful historian of Connecticut, 
Trumbull, makes the following remarks, which all who read 
his work must feel to be just. " With such wisdom did our 
venerable ancestors provide for the freedom and liberties of 
themselves and their posterity. Thus happily did they guard 
against every encroachment on the rights of the subject. This, 
probably, is one of the most free and happy constitutions of 
civil government which has ever been formed. The forma- 
tion of it at so early a period, when the light of liberty was 
wholly darkened in most parts of the earth, and the rights of 
Inen were so little understood in others, does great honour to 
their ability, integrity, and love of mankind. To posterity, 
indeed, it exhibited a most benevolent regard. It has con- 
tinued with little alteration, to the present time, (1814.) The 
happy consequences of it, which, for more than a century and 
an half, the people of Connecticut have experienced, are 
beyond description."! 

* "Thus early," says Stith, "was the assembly of the colony studious and 
careful to establish our liberties ; and we had here, in t.ie eighth and ninth 
articles of its laws, a Petition of Right passed, above four years before tiiat 
njatter was indubitably settled and explained in England." — History of Vir- 
ginia, book 5. 
^ t Vol. i. c. 6. 

Vol. I.—F 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

Chalmers, who wrote to prove the uniform " self-suffi- 
ciency, and rebellious dispositions of New England," repre- 
sents with much chiding and lamenting, how " the first set- 
tlers of New Haven erected a system suitable indeed to 
their own view^s, but altogether independent on the sove- 
reign state ;"" and how " there was established, in Rhode 
Island and Connecticut, a mere democracy or rule of the peo- 
ple; every power, as Avell deliberative as active, being invested 
in the freemen of the corporation, or their delegates, and the 
supreme executive of the empire by an inattention little ho- 
nourable to the English statesman of those days, being wholly 
excluded."* Hutchinson, in his History of Massachusetts, 
traces, in a summary and striking manner, the operations of 
the spirit which gives so much umbrage to Chalmers. " It is 
" observable, all the colonies, before the reign of king Charles 
" the Second, Maryland excepted, settled a model of govern- 
" ment for themselves. Virginia had been distracted under the 
" government of presidents and governors, with councils, in 
*' whose nomination or removal the people had no voice, un- 
" til in the year 1620, a house of burgesses broke out in the 
" colony, neither the king nor the grand council at home, 
" having given any powers or directions for it. The governor 
*' and assistants of Massachusetts, at first intended to rule the 
" people, and, as I have observed, obtained their consent for 
" it; butthislasted two or three years only; and, although there 
" is no colour for it in the charter, yet a House of Deputies 
''^ appeared suddenhj^ in 16o4, tothe surprise of their magis- 
*' trates, and the disappointment of their schemes for power. 
*' Connecticut soon after followed the plan of Massachusetts. 
'^' New Haven, although the people had the highest rever- 
" ence for their leaders, and for near thirty years, in judicial 
"■proceeding, submitted to their magistracy (it must, how- 
" ever, be remembered, that it was annually elected,) without 
*' a jury, yet in matters of legislation, the people, from the 
*' beginning TfOi//^/ Aai;e their share by their representatives. 
" New Hampshire combined together under the same form as 
" Massachusetts. Lord Say tempted the principal men of 
" Massachusetts to make themselves and their heirs nobles 
" and absolute governors of a new colony, but under this 
" plan they could find no people to follow them."f 

In Maryland and Pennsylvania, the first assemblies esta- 
blished a popular representation, and, in all their political 

• Page 290, 294, Annals. 
\ Vol. ii, p. 298. 



OP THE COLONTSTS. 

Regulations, proceeded upon broad views of civil freedom. SE( 
The same remark may be extended to the Carolinas,* and to ""-^ 
New York. The inhabitants of this province wrested from 
the patentee, the Duke of York, in 1681, privileges of self 
government similar to those assumed in the other plantations. 
No one of the proprietaries was able to establish, without 
modification, the constitution which he framed for his grant ; 
all were compelled, in the end, to acquiesce in the more 
liberal order of things required by the assemblies of the peo- 
ple. In some of the provinces, no time was lost in abolishing 
primogeniture and entail, which Adam Smith so justly styles, 
*' the tAvo most unjust and unwise regulations that exist." 

The first emigrants to Virginia, New England, Maryland, -^ 
and Pennsylvania, would seem to have been universally in 
their respective eras, much in advance of those whom they 
left at home, as regards not onlv private morals, but the love 
and intelligence of freedom. Whoever has studied the history 
of England, with the due attention to particular facts, must 
be convinced, that until the revolution of 1688, the theory of 
liberty was, except in the case of a few illustrious individuals, 
as little understood as practised ; and in fact, we may descend 
much lower, without being greatly edified on this head. In 
the time of James I, the epoch of Virginia and New England 
— a slavish reverence of monarchy was nearly universal, and 
the sj'^stem of administration altogether absolute and arbitrary. 
Of the social state, we may judge from the representations of 
Hume, who tells us, "that high pride of family then prevailed; 
that it was by dignity and stateliness of behaviour, that the 
gentry and nobility distinguished themselves from the com- 
mon people ;" and that, " much ceremony took place in the 
common intercourse of life, and little familiarity was in- 
dulged by the great." The concurrence of the colonists in 
the same political maxims and arrangements, the reverse of 
what prevailed in England, and thoughout Europe, — the 
contentment and tranquillity Avhich reigned among them, as 
to political doctrines, and forms of government, particularly 
in New England, are strikingly contrasted with the sanguinary 
and unprincipled struggles in the mother country ; with that 
" continued fever in the domestic administration," and those 
" furious convulsions and disorders" which are so eloquently 
painted by Hume. The political distractions extant in 
the colonial history, were occasioned, almost universally, by 
the ambition and avarice of the proprietaries, or the violence 

* See Note B, 



CH VRACTER AND MERITS 

T I. attempted upon the charters by the English government and 
"^^^ its representatives in America. 

5. The preceding survey makes it sufficiently plain that no 
credit can, in strictness, be allowed to England for the insti- 
tutions which the colonists framed, themselves, in the wil- 
derness. Nor is anv fairly due to her, for the liberal purport 
of the charters which they received. All the original char- 
ters, except that of Georgia, were granted between the years 
1603 and 1688. It would be setting at defiance both history 
and reason, to ascribe to the house of Stuart, or to the Pro-. 
tectorate, any fond or liberal dispositions in favour of the 
cause of freedom in America, stripped of all gothic encum- 
brances. An English historian has remarked, on the subject 
of the patents accorded by the first James and Charles, that 
these monarchs were glad to get rid of the turbulent, repub- 
lican religionists, at any rate ; and freely invested them with 
any privileges, to be exercised on a desolate continent, at 
the distance of three thousand miles, where, as they sup- 
posed, it could never be of account to extend the arm of pre- 
rogative. The English Universal History makes the fol- 
lowing statement, of the manner in which the congregation 
of Brownists, succeeded in their application : — 

" Sir Robert Naunton was then one of the secretaries of 
*' state, and the exiled Puritans, as they were then called, knew 
*' him to be their friend." 

" They applied to Naunton for leave to settle in those in- 
" hospitable wilds, where the Indians, savage as they were, 
*' were more desirable neighbours than the tyrants from 
*' whom they fled. Naunton had the address to persuade 
*' James I, that it was bad policy to unpeople his own king- 
*' doms for the benefit of his neighbours ; and that whatever 
*' exception he might have, he could have none in granting 
*' them liberty of conscience, where they would still continue 
*' to be his subjects, and where they might extend his domi- 
*' nion. His majesty's answer was, that it was a good and 
*' honest proposal, and liberty was accordingly granted."* 

" At our first planting America," says the author of the Eu- 
ropean Settlements, " it was not difficult for a person who had 
" interest at court, to obtain large tracts of land, not inferior in 
*' extent to kingdoms ; and to be invested with a power very 
*' little less than regal over them ; to govern by what laws, and 
" to form what sort of constitution he pleased."! The same 

• Vol. xl. p. 272. t Vol. ii. p. 298. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

autl^or remarlcs,* " that nothing of an enlightened and legis- ^'^^ 
lative spirit appears in the planning of the English colonies, ^*^ 
and that the charter governments were evidently copied 
from some of the corporations at home." The patent of the 
council of Plymouth comprehended the continent of Ame- 
rica, from New Scotland to Carolina. In less than eighty 
years, fifteen hundred miles of the sea coast were granted 
away ; some of the grants, — that especially to lord Claren- 
don and others, of the whole tract of country lying between 
the thirty-first and thirty-sixth degrees of north latitude — 
extended to the Pacific Ocean : in several instances the 
same surface was embraced in different grants. 

The acquisition of territory in America was the ruling ^ 
passion of the times ; and Charles II, found the gratification 
of this passion an easy mode of compensating his adherents, 
and feeding the rapacitv of his courtiers. It is an observa- 
tion of Macpherson, in his Annals, that " the charters of 
Rhode Island and Con lecticut were carelessly given by a very 
careless monarch." The agent of Connecticut won the per- 
sonal favour of the monarch, by presenting him with a ring 
of an extraordinary mechanism, the gift of Charles I, to the 
agent's grandfather. He found means, also, to secure the 
support of the chamberlain of his majesty's household, and of 
the lord priv)^ seal, for the colony's petition. f Penn obtained 
his patent from the restored monarch, as Sir George Calvert 
had procured that of Maryland from James I, — by virtue of 
court patronage. It had been promised to his father, admiral 
Penn, a great favourite ; and Clarkson relates, in his Life of 
the son, that it was allowed as payment of a debt of sixteen 
thousand pounds sterling, due from the royal government to 
the admiral. Calvert is said by Chalmers to have indited 
his own grant : Penn caused to be given to his the com- 
plexion required by his aims. Both of these illustrious men 
were actuated in the adoption of liberal provisions, by their 
love of freedom, as well as by a knowledge of their true 
interests. But the historians are unanimous in declaring 
that the other lord proprietors gave the pledge of civil and re- 
ligious liberty from no other motive than that of alluring set- 
tlers ; and the acknowledged necessity of this expedient be- 
speaks the high character of those, who, in that age, could be 
gained upon no other terms. Much stress is to be laid on the 



* Vol. ii. p. 301. 

\ TnimbuU's History of Connecticut, b. i. c. 



CHARACTEli AND MERITS 

coincidence of Chalmers, with these views, and it may be 
asserted from the following passages of his Annals.* 

"It was rather tlie example of tlie Spaniards, than the practice of tlie 
renowned nations of antiqult}', wliicli was copied by England in colonizing", 
because similar success and wealth was ex|;ectcd. Prompted by his ambi- 
tion, perhaps more by his vanity, the primary designs of James I, were, to 
share in the g"old and silver which were expected from mines, to rnle tlie 
colonies in the same manner as he had proposed to govern Ireland, as terri- 
tories belonging to his person, and therefore subject to his will, though his 
ultimate views are not so easily discerned. The great corporations -wMch have 
acqvired tlie honmir of planting the first permanent settlements, had no other object, 
probabbf, than the e.r/)ectation of sudden gain from the ivorking of mines, a pro- 
jec*^, of all others the most delusive, the most to be discountenanced by na- 
tions which regard their own good." — p. 675. 

" The country which had been denominated Florida by the French and 
Spaniards, by the English Virginia, at len.,th owed its final settlement as 
much to the rapacity of the courtiers of t harles 11, as to t!ie facility of a 
prince, who wished to reward those to whom he was so much indebted, 
with a liberality that cost him little. The pretence, which had been used 
on former occasions, of a pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel among 
a barbarous people, who inhabited an uncultivated country, was succcsst'uily 
employed to procure a grant of that immense region, lying on the Atlantic 
OceaU; between the thirty-sixth degree of nortli latitude and the river Saint 
Matheo. On the 24th vi' March, 1663, this territory was erected into a 
province, by the name of Carolina. They, the lord pi-oprietors, were in- 
vested with as ample rights and jurisdictions within their American palati- 
nate, as any bishop of Durham enjoyed vi'ithin his diocese. And the present 
charter seems to have been copied from that of Maryland. 

"Thus was that colony established upon tlie broad foundation of a regular 
system of freedom of every kind ; vviiich it was now deemed necessary to offer 
to Englishmen, to induce them to encounter all the difficulties of planting a distant 
country, covered with forests, and inhabited by numerous tribes, to endure tht 
dangers of famine, imd the damps of the climate." 

When the nature and tendency of the colonial charters be- 
gan to be understood at the British court, it was quicklj' re- 
solved to attempt their destruction. As early as 1635, Charles 
I, assailed that of Massachtisetts ; and Charles II, repenting 
ofhis prodigal and heedless distribution of freedom, continued 
the warfare upon colonial liberties in general. All the char- 
ters of New England were vacated by James II, whose plan 
it was to reduce the colonies under one arbitrary government. 
By her new, and forced compact with king William, Massa- 
chusetts lost a valuable part of her original privileges; and in 
the reign of this monarch, Pennsylvania, — although, indeed, 
soon regained, by the indefatigable zeal and consummate ad- 
dress of Penn, — was, without any respect to her charter, 
annexed to New York, the province which had perpetually 
to wrestle with the royal government for the common rights 



Page 51 r. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

of Englishmen. Early in the reign of queen Anne, a bill was SEC'a 
brought into parliament, which proposed the abrogation of ' "~ 
the charters of New England, of East and West New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Carolina, upon the ground of 
their being prejudicial and repugnant to the trade of the king- 
dom, to her majesty's revenue, &c.*= The bill failed from the 
weight of reasonings looking to the interests of the mother 
country. In the year 1748, the ministry offered another biH, 
by which the king's instructions were to have the force of laW 
in the colonics ; but the plan involved an usurpation which, 
when displayed in full light, and traced in its consequences 
both to England and America, appeared to the majority of 
the Commons too gross and dangerous for immediate adop- 
tion. It svv^ept away all the charters without trial or legal 
judgment. f Upon the occasion of the extension of the muti- 
ny act to America, in 1755, the agent of New England, near 
the British government, Bollan, a man of sagacity and im- 
partial mind, apprised his constituents of his possessing the 
best evidence, that it was meditated at the British court "to 
govern America like Ireland, by keeping up a body of stand- 
ing forces with a military chest, under some act similar to 
the famous Poyning's law." 

If more direct and determined efforts to effect the object 
were not subsequently made by the government, until the 
year 1764, it was because the enterprise had become too ha- 
zardous. The colonies had attained to considerable strength, 
and grown inflexibly tenacious of their liberties ; their aid 
was indispensable for the destruction of the French power 
on this continent; and this circumstance made it of course 
eligible to preserve, or at least, not wholly to destroy, their 
good will and national sympathy. It was apprehended, 
moreover, in queen Anne's time, as may be seen by one of 
the quotations which I have made from Gee, — that they 
might, if chafed and disgusted, throw themselves into the 
arms of France, and turn the scales in favour of that hated 
rival. To considerations of this nature are we to ascribe 
the forbearance so fortunate for all parties ; not to any ten- 
derness for ti-ans-atlantic freedom, or to a generous admira- 
tion of the noble spirit and carriage of the trans-atlantic kin- 
dred. Until the period when their enslavement was sys- 
tematically and perseveringly attempted, circumstances had 
uniformly been such, as to render that course of proceed- 

* For a particular account of this bill and the proceedings of the House of 
Commons thereupon, see Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. ili. 4to. pAT. 
■ff See Minot's (Jontmuatiou of the History oiMassacliusetts, p. 146. vol. i. 



QIIARACTEII AND MERITS 

ing, incompatible with the prosecution of objects deemed of 
immediate necessity or higher importance. Had not this 
been the case, whig and tory would have alike assailed the 
constitutional privileges of British America. " JVhe>i the 
xvar is closed^'' said the elder Pitt to Dr. Franklin, during 
the struggle of 1756, between France and England, "if I 
should be in the ministry, I will take measures to prevent 
the colonies, from having a power, to refuse or delay the 
supplies, which maybe wanted for national purposes." 

6. The system of religious freedom, coeval with the esta- 
blishment of some of the colonies, constitutes a proud dis- 
tinction for the founders. There is a glory to be envied by 
the world, in the first, and continued recognition and en- 
forcement of the rights of conscience, by constitutional law. 
Compared with it, the sublimest discoveries in science, the 
most useful inventions in the arts, the most majestic physical 
monuments, must appear as secondary, in the opinion of those 
who consider what would be the effect, for the dignity and 
happiness of our species, were the example universally fol- 
lowed; and what the evils that have flowed and continue to 
flow from religious intolerance. This glory cannot be denied 
to the provinces of Maryland, Rhode Island,* and Penn- 
sylvania ; and it brightens with the reflection, how com- 
pletely the human mind was elsewhere shut to the voice of 
reason and humanity. Religious equality was unknown to 
the codes of Europe ; and persecution, adopting, wherever 
it prevailed, the injustice as well as terrors of the inquisi- 
tion, raged in the countries claiming to be the most refined 
and enlightened. Even in the United Provinces, so often — to 
use the language of Hume, cited as models of toleration, 
though all sects were admitted, yet civil offices were only en- 
joyed by the professors of the established religion. I need not 
remind those who have read the woi-k of the incomparable 
historian, of the state of things in England — of the mean 
and ignoble arts, as well as the sanguinary atrocities practised 
in the wars of the leading sects, which, as he remarks, throw 
an indelible stain on the British annals. f A single extract 
from his history will illustrate the progress of reason and hu- 
manity in the Scottish parliament, but a little before Penn 
organized his commonwealth, and nearly two generations 
after Maryland had taken the principles which I have 
quoted,:|: as the foundations of her polity. " In a session 

" f 

• See Note G. f Cliap. 68 \ Pag'e 32, 



OP THE COLONISTS. 

(June, 1673,) of the Scottish parliament, a severe law was en- SEC 
acted against conventicles. Ruinous fines were imposed both 
on the preachers and hearers, even if the meetings had been 
in houses ; but field conventicles were subjected to the pe- 
nalty of death, and confiscation of goods. Four hundred 
marks (Scots,) were offered as a reward to those who should 
seize the criminals ; and they were indemnified for any slaiigh' 
ter which they should commit in the execution of such an 
undertaking. And as it was found diflicult to get evidence 
against these conventicles, however numerous, it was enact- 
ed by another law, that, whoever, being required by the 
council, refused to give information upon oath, should be pun- 
ished by arbitrary fines, by imprisonment, or by baniahment 
to the plantations.''''^ 

The Catholics of Maryland, who had hoped to escape the 
fell spirit of triumphant bigotry, by renouncing their country, 
were not long suffered to remain undisturbed in their remote 
and hard-earned retreat. Their scheme of i-eligious charity, 
was as incomprehensible, as hateful, to their old persecutors. 
Some of the most desperate and fanatical of the sectaries, 
who had repaired to the Catholic asvlum, were instigated to 
disturb its tranquillity, and to set themselves in array against 
their magnanimous hosts. During the Commonwealth in. 
England, the proprietary government of Maryland was sub- 
verted, and the affairs of the province put into the hands of 
commissioners, creatures of the Protector. The spurious as- 
sembly which they convened after recognizing Cromwell's 
*' just title and authority," enacted, that " none who professed 
the Popish religion could be protected in the province by the 
laws of England!" The Catholic missionaries in Maryland, 
who from the year 1640, had begun to carry the light of the 
gospel among the Indians, were compelled to desist, on the 
ground that they aimed at forming a party against the Eng- 
lish government, to enable themselves to become independent. 

Things took nearly the same course after the reinstating 
of the proprietary by Charles II. " The troubles in Mary- 
*' land," says Chalmers, " were made a foundation, whereon 
*' were raised fresh complaints against the proprietary in Eng- 
*' land for partiality to Papists. Lord Baltimore, in justifica- 
" tion of himself and the province, showed the act of 1649, 
*' concerning religion, which had been confirmed in the year 
*' 1676, as a perpetual lav/, and which tolerated and protected. 
*' every sect of Christians, but gave special privileges to none. 

* Chapter 6». 

Vol. I.— G 



CHAtlACTER AND MERtTS 

" It was in vain for him to represent, that he had endeavour- 
" ed to divide the offices of his government as nearly equal. 
" among Protestants and Roman Catholics, as their abilities 
*' would permit: that he had given almost the whole com- 
*' mand of the militia to the former, who were entrusted with 
" the care of the arms and military stores. The ministers of 
*' Charles II, to throw the imputation of popery from their 
*' own shoulders, commanded that all offices should be put 
" into Protestant hands."* 

The Church of England was at length established by law 
in Maryland; and the Catholics were rewarded for the 
*' mildest of laws," for " a moderation unparalleled in the 
annals of the world,"f by being disfranchised, and subjected 
anew to the restrictions and penalties from which their char- 
ter had seemed to assure them a perpetual protection. The 
condition to which they were reduced by the government of 
William, was not only a horrible injustice in itself, but a 
scandalous breach of national faith. The Protestant religion 
had been already established by law in Virginia, in 1661, 
and that colony converted, likewise, into a theatre of perse- 
cution. An attempt was made, at the beginning of the 
eighteenth century, to give the same ascendency to the 
Church of England, in Carolina ; but it encountered a spi- 
rited and successful resistance from the inhabitants. 

7 . The excesses of bigotry, which were committed by the 
Puritans of New England, during the seventeenth century, can 
neither be disguised nor defended. They admit, however, of 
some extenuation, which is to be found in such considerations 
as the following, offered by one of their descendants 4 — 
" To vindicate the errors of our ancestors, were to make them 
" our own. It is allowed, that they wei-e culpable ; but, we do 
*' not concede that, in the present instance, they stood alone, 
" or that they merited all the censure bestowed on them. 
" Laws similar to those of Massachusetts, were passed else- 
" where against the Quakers, and particularly in Virginia, If 
" no execution took place here, as it did in New England, 
*' it was not owing to the moderation of the church, (Jeffer- 
" son, Virg. Query xviii.) The prevalent opinion among 
*' most sects of Christians, at that day, that toleration is sinful, 
*' ought to be remembered ; nor should it be forgotten, that the 
" first Quakers in New England, beside speaking and writing 
*' Avhat was deemed blasphemous, reviled magistrates and 

* Chapter 15. j Chalmers. 

\ IlolmeSj in his An^erican Annals. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

*' ministers, and disturbed religious assemblies ; and that the SEC^ 
" tendency of their tenets and practices was to the subversion 
*' of the commonwealth, in that period of its infancy. (See 
" Hubbard, MS. N. Eng. Hazard Coll. i. 630 ; ii.5,"96 ; and 
*' the early historians of New England.) In reviewing the 
" conduct of our revered ancestors, it is but just to make 
** allowance for the times in which they lived, and the occa- 
*' sions of their measures." 

Any accusation or sarcasm on this head, comes with a 
wretched air from Great Britain, Her cotemporary history is 
a tissue of all that can be conceived most atrocious, or malig- 
nant, or preposterous, in the hostilities and extravagances of 
fanaticism ; it cannot be surpassed in the annals of those enor- 
mities and follies, which provoke alternately laughter and 
tears, scorn and horror. On comparing the condition and 
pretensions of the English and Scotch natiotis^ (for the re- 
proach attaches to the whole,) with those of the zealots of 
New England, everyone will perceive at once on which side 
lies the greater load of guilt and shame. Massachusetts had 
no assembly or synod, rivalling the Rump Parliament, or the 
presbytery of Argyle ; — there is no transaction in the history 
of that province, upon the same scale of mischief and absur- 
dity, as the affair of the Popish plot — there is nothing like the 
conviction and execution of Stafford, upon the evidence of 
Oates and Tuberville ; no judicial career vying with the cir- 
cuits of Kirk and Jefferies. 

The religious ferment subsided in New England before the 
expiration of the seventeenth century. Not an instance is to 
be found, in her subsequent history, of sanguinary or vexa- 
tious persecution for variations in opinion or worship.* The 
rigor exercised against particular sects, in the other colonies, 
is to be traced in all cases, to the instigation, or general 
influence, of the mother country. At the separation, advan- 
tage was immediately taken of the entire freedom of legisla- 
tion, to put all denominations of Christians upon a footing of 
equality ; and this proceeding shows how prevalent the spirit 
of toleration had become among the colonists. That the rea- 
son and humanity of England lagged far behind, is sufficient- 
ly attested by the Draconian Code concerning the Catholics, 
which survived ourrevolution, and the disabilities from which 
the Protestant dissenters are not yet relieved. If I did not find 
it stated in the fourth number of the Quarterly Review, that 
" the northern states have hardly outgrown their fanaticism," 
and that there is, in America, " scarcely any medium between 

* See Note. D. 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

r I. " over-godliness and a brutal irreligion," I would confident- 
"^^ii^ ly appeal for what we now are, as respects our religious 
spirit, to the following statement, of the 31st number of that 
authoritative journal. " The old settlers of America carried 
*' Avith them habits of strict morality and austere religion. 
*' The descendants of these old settlers have outgrown the 
" intolerance and bigotry of their ancestors, but have retained 
*' their virtues, and embellished them by humane manners. 
*' They are republicans as much by principle and duty as by 
*' prejudice and inheritance." 

I would not hesitate to concede to the author of" The Bri- 
tish empire in America," that " the great foible of the New 
England history is the story of the witches,"* — But this story 
has aspects widely different from that under which it is ex- 
hibited abroad. Belief in witchcraft was epidemic in the 
seventeenth century, and could not fail to extend to New 
England. The insulated situation of her inhabitants, — one 
which presents them, to use their own graphic language, as 
" conflicting with many grievous difficulties and sufferings in 
the vast howling wilderness, among wild men and wild 
beasts"! — the austerity of their domestic habits — the solem- 
nity of their religious feelings — the terrific dangers to which 
they were hourly exposed — their daily intercourse with the 
Indians, whose conversation was perpetually of demons and 
necromancers — the new maladies of body, resulting from a 
new and crude climate — the heart-sickening recollections of 
*' the pleasant land of their nativity," of which the ravening 
brood of tyrants would almost be forgotten, as memory recall- 
ed its better features, v/ith the enjoyments and ties of their 
youth — all these influences combined against the force of their 
reason, and contributed to render irresistible the contagion of 
the European superstition. The simple example of the mo- 
ther country might account for their infatuation ; and the ex- 
tent to which it is chargeable upon that example, may be 
understood from the followingpassage of Hutchinson's His- 
tory of Massachusetts. " Not many years before the delusion 
" seized New England, Glanville published his witch stories 
" in England ; Perkins and other Nonconformists were earlier; 
*' but the great authority was that of Sir Matthew Hale, re- 
*' vered in New England not only for his knowledge in the 
" law, but for his gravity and piety. The trial of the witches 
*' in Suffolk was published in 1684. All these books were 

* Preface. 

t Petition of the General Court of Massachusetts to tlie king. (1680.) 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

*' in New England, and the conformity between the behaviour SEC 
**■ of Goodwin's children, and most of the supposed bewitched v^" 
*•• at Salem, and the behaviour of those in Eng'land^ is so exact 
*' as to leave no room to doubt the stories had been read by the 
" New England persons themselves^ or had been told to them by 
*' others who had read them. Indeed, this conformitv, instead 
*' of giving suspicion, was urged in confirmation of the truth 
*' of both ; the Old England demons and the NeAV being so 
" much alike. The court justified themselves from books of 
" law, and the authorities of Keble, Dalton, and other law- 
*' vers, then of the first character, who laid down rules of 
*' conviction as absurd and dangerous as any which were 
" practised in New England."* The authors of the Univer- 
sal History have also stated some palliative facts, which de- 
serve to be reported upon such airthority. — "In justice to 
" the ministry and people of New England, Ave are to ob- 
*' serve, that the persecutions for witchcraft were carried on 
" by wretches, partly to gratify their private resentments 
" and interests, and partly from a spirit of enthusiasm and 
*' credulity ; nor could they have happened had it not been 
" for the xveakness of the governor and Dr. Mather, who were 
*■' rendered the tools of more designing men. The people in 
" general, and some ministers, particularly Mr. Caleb of 
*■' Boston, detested them, and remonstrated against them 
" from the beginning, but all to no purpose."! 

All ranks in Scotland and England concurred in raising a '^ 
complete demonocracy for those countries, throughout the se- 
venteenth century. Lord Kaimes asserts, in his Sketches of 
tJie History of Man, that during the civil wars every one be- 
lieved in magic, charms, spells, sorcery and witchcraft. An 
incident related by Evelvn, for which no parallel is to be 
found in American history, shows the temper of the times, in 
England. "29th March, 1652 — was that celebrated eclipse 
of the sun, so much threatened by the astrologers, and which 
had so exceedingly alarmed the xvhole nation., that hardly any 
one would work or stir out of their houses, so ridiculously were 
they abused by knavish and ignorant star-gazers." The Long 
parliament, alias, " the great reformation parliament," issued 
■several commissions, " to discover and prosecute witches," 
and upon those commissions were inany unfortunate persons, 
of both sexes, tried and executed. We should not forget the 
testimony of Hume, with respect to the state of Scotland, at 
the period in question. " The fanaticism which prevailed, 
' 

* Vol. ii. chap. i. \ Vol. xxxix. 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

^ I- " acquired, besides the malignants and engagers^ a new object 
"^^ " of abhorrence. These were the sorcerers. So prevalent was 
" the opinion of witchcraft, that great numbers^ accused of 
*' that crime, were burnt by sentence of the magistrates, 
*' through all parts of Scotland. In a village near Berwick, 
*' which contained only fourteen houses, fourteen persons 
*' were punished by fire, and it became a science every -where 
" much studied and cultivated,, to distinguish a true witch by 
''^proper trials and symptoms T^ 

I have now before me a quarto volume, published in Lon- 
don, in the present year (1819), and entitled, "The memo- 
rable things that fell out within the Island of Britain, from 
1638 to 1683, by the Rev. Mr. Robert Law, of that time." 
This work is little more than a chronicle of the witchcraft of 
Britain, during the interval to which it is confined; and, truly, 
the details of credulity and judicial murder which it fur- 
nishes, might entitle New England to expect very gentle 
usage in that quarter on the subject of witchcraft. Among 
the papers prefixed to the " Memorable things," is a " True 
relation of an apparition, expressions, and actings, of a 
spirit, which infested the house of Andrew Mackie, in 
Scotland, in 1695 ;" which relation is signed on oath by at 
least twelve regular clergymen of especial sanctity and 
authority. The worthy minister, Law, has left, in his 
journal, a notice of New England, which may reasonably 
be taken as the epitome of the popular notions of the day, 
concerning that colony. It is sufficiently remarkable to be 
copied. 

" August, 1676.) Tliese of New England that had planted that part of 
Americ:i, are grievously troubled by the natives, who make inroads upon the 
plantations, and kill many of the English, having by their slaves, (that were 
witji the English and fled to them again,) learned the art of shooting guns, 
purchasing out of France and Holland guns, swords, and pycks, make them 
much adoe and great trouble, so that they were necessitate to shift for them- 
selves in other parts of the world. The truth is, the Protestants in all 
parts of the world suffer in these sad tymcs. The origin of these in New 
England, went from England in the days of queen Mary of England, when 
the persecution against the Protestants was raised there, and in the days of 
queen Elizabeth, her successor, a Protestant, was well supplyed with money 
and otlier necessaries to make good that plantation. They were all fur- 
nished with able ministers, and grew up to a famous and glorious church. 
Their church government was and is yet independent, and of thdr state it 
is aristocvaci(^. Tht'ii rt-fvsed to o-iun the king of Britain as their king, only in 
commtvnoration of their coming out of England, they noxu and then send him a 
free gift." 

For thirty years after the settlement of Massachusetts,— 

• Chapter 59. 



OF TlTR COLONISTS. 

while victims were daily sacrificed by fire and the rope, in SliCT 
Gr It Britain, — none suffered for witchcraft in that colony. "^^^ 
H: r. hinson asserts truly, that " more were put to death in a 
single county of England for that cause, than suffered in New 
England from the planting until his time, in 1760."* The 
phrenzy endured in America but seven months ; whereas 
it may be said to have continued, with little or no abate- 
ment, in the mother country, in Scotland particularly, — > 
for a long series of years. If Cotton Mather partook of the 
wretched delusion, he was at least as excusable as Sir Mat- 
thew Hale ; and we may doubt whether there was any learn- 
ed judge of New England, cotemporary with chief justice 
Blackstone, who would have gravely summed up the evi- 
dence respecting the reality of witchcraft, and as gravely 
decided it to be, " most eligible to conclude, that, in general, 
such a thing as witchcraft had been."f North America, of the 
eighteenth century, can furnish no counterpart for the story 
of the Cocklane ghost. Hutchinson has, on this subject, some 
observations in addition to those I have quoted from him, 
which ought not to be withheld. " The trial of Richard 
*' Hatheway, the impostor, before lord chief justice Holt, was 
" ten or twelve years after the trials in New England. This 
*' was a great discouragement to prosecutions in England for 
*' witchcraft, but an effectual stop was not put to them until 
" the act of parliament in the reign of his late majesty, George 
*' II. Even this did not wholly cure the common people, and 
" we hear of old women ducked and cruelly murdered within 
*' these last twenty years. Reproach, then, for hanging 
" witches, although it has been often cast up07i the people of 
" Nexv England by those of Old^ yet it must have been done 
" xvith an ill grace.'''' 

8. As respects political intrepidity.^ we may challenge a 
comparison between our ancestors, and the communities the 
most renowned for that potent virtue. The instances of it 
with which our colonial annals abound, are inestimably pre- 
cious, as lessons and incentives for the American people at 
all times, and under all circumstances. We cannot too often 
remind each other how heroically the first settlers, and the 



* Hist, of Mass. vol. ii. chap. i. 

•j" Commentaries, b. iv. c. iv. " Witchcraft or sorcery, is a truth to which every 
nation in the world, hath, in its turn, borne testimony, by either examples 
se'emingly well attested, or prohibitory laws, which at least suppo.sc the pos- 
sibility of a conamgrce with evil spirits." 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

generations immediately succeeding, overloofeed their Owti 
physical weakness and domestic dangers, and braved the 
power and pride of the mother country, in asserting the 
rights of man and the privileges recognized or implied in 
their charters. The complaints which the British historians 
and orators have uttered concerning their haughty and re- 
fractory spirit, and their early aspirations after positive 
sovereignty, are to be cherished as testimonies borne to the 
elevation of their character. I repeat with exultation, and 
think there should be no anxiety on the part of any Ameri- 
can to avoid, the reproaches intended to be made by such 
allegations as the following : — 

" The persons whom the Plymouth company sent over to America, as soon 
as they landed there, considered themselves as individuals united by volun- 
tary associations, possessing the natural rights of men who form a society, to 
adopt wliat mode of government, and to enact what laws they deemed most 
conducive to general felicity. Suitably to these ideas, they framed all their 
future plans of court and ecclesiastical policy.* 

" Massachusetts, in conformity to its accustomed principles, acted during 
the civil wars, almost altogether as an independent state. It formed leagues 
not only with the neighbouring colonies, but with foreign nations, without 
the consent or knowledge of the government of England. It permitted n» 
appeals from its courts to the judicatories of the sovereign state; and it re- 
fused to exercise its jurisdiction in the name of the commonwealth of Eng- 
land. It erected a mint at Boston, impressing the year 1652 on the coin, 
as the era of independence.** Thus evincing to all what hud been foretold 
by the wise, that a people of such principles, religious and political, settling 
at so great a distance from control, would necessarily form an independent 
state-i 

" During the greater part of the reign of Charles II, the colony of Connec- 
ticut acted rather as an independent state, than as the inconsiderable terri- 
tory of a great nation. The general orders of that prince were cojitemricd. be- 
cause the I'oyal interposition was deemed inconsistent with the charter. The 
acts of navigation were despised and disobeyed, because they were consider- 
ed equally inconsistent with tl^e freedom of trade as with the security of an- 
cient privileges : and the courts of justice refused to allow appeals to Eng- 
land, because the powers of ultimate jurisdiction were claimed from the 
patent.i: 

"On receiving authentic news of the revolution of 1688, and the accession 
of William and Mary, though the people of Massachusetts spoke with de- 
ference of the higher powers in England, and of their relationship tO'it, they 
resolved with their peculiar spirit, that the settlement of their government on 
that extraordinary eccasion, belonged wholly to themselves. "t 

" The Americans have had all along a reluctance to order and good go- 
vernment, since their first establishment in their countrj-. They have 
been obstinate, undutiful, and ungovernable from the very beginning : 
from their first infant settlements in that country. They began to manifest 
this spirit as early as the reign of Charles the First. 'Ihey disputed 



* Robertson's History of Ameiica, vol. iVi 
f Chalmers, chap.viii. Annab. 

i Ibid. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

our right of fishing on their coasts, in the times of the commonwciltii and SEi 
protectorate, &c.* ^^ 

" The bad consequences of planting northern colonies were early pre- 
dicted. Sir Josiah Child foretold, before the revolution, that they would, 
in the end, prove our rivals in power, commerce, and manufactures. Dave- 
nant adopted the same ideas, and foresaw what has since happened : he 
foresaw that whenever America found herself of sufficient strength to con- 
tend with the mother country, she would endeavour to form herself into a 
separate and independent state. This has been the constant object of New 
England, almost from her earliest infancy," &c.f 

We find the colony of Virginia, when only in its seven- 
teenth year, (1624,) and just recovered from the heaviest dis- 
asters, answering, through its general assembly, an angry and 
insidious inquiry into its condition and dispositions, ordered 
by the king and privy council, and resisting the artifices and 
threats of the commissioners deputed from England for the 
purpose of extorting a surrender of its charter, with the ut- 
most sagacity and boldness, or, to use the phrase of its histo- 
rian, Stith, " with sharpness and vigour;"' — 'with an array of 
the loftiest principles, and in a style of composition very little 
inferior to the best of that age4 The sjime colony, only 
twelve years after, seized the royal governor, Harvey, become 
odious to them by his exactions and insolence, and sent him a 
prisoner to London. And it is further illustrative of her in- 
trepidity, that Charles I. considered the proceeding as an act 
of rebellion, and reinstated the obnoxious ofiicer, — >to super- 
sede him, however, immediately, by one of a character dissi- 
milar in all respects. Virginia, prepossessed in fav^our of the 
royal cause, resisted the government of the Protectorate, by 
arms, in 1651, and submitted at length to the powerful squa- 
dron sent to enforce her obedience, only upon terms which 
do infinite honour to her courage, and remain a striking me- 
morial of her resolute and enlightened attachment to liber- 
ty. The following abstract of some of the articles of capi- 
tulation will be read with interest. 1. " The plantation of 
" Virginia^ and all the inhabitants thereof, shall remain in 
" due subjection to the Commonwealth oi E7igland^ not as a 



* Earl Talbot, in the House of Lords. Debate of Feb. 29, 1776. 

f Lord Mansfield, in the House of Lords. Debate Nov. 15, 1775. 

i See the account of this controversy, in the 5th book of Stith's History 
of Virginia. " Every titheable or taxable inhabitant," says Burk, " voted 
for members of assembly. And what honour does not the choice of such 
an assembly as that of 1624, reflect on the colonists ; what sagacity and 
public spirit does it not suppose in them, at a juncture so delicate and try- 
ing, to have selected a body which immediately saw their true interest, and 
pursued it with ardour and unanimity, in the face of the royal commission- 
ers, and in defiance of the authority and resentment of the king," 
Vol, I.— H 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

" conquered country, but as a country submitting by their 
" own voluntary act, and shall enjoy such freedoms and privi- 
" leges as belong to the free people of England. 2. The gene- 
" ral assembly, as formerly, shall convene, and transact the af- 
*' fairs of the colony. 3. The people of Virginia shall have a 
" free trade, as the people of England^ to all places, and with 
" all nations. 4. Virginia shall be free from all taxes, cus- 
" toms, and impositions whatsoever; and none shall be im- 
*' posed on them, without consent of the general assembly ; 
" and neither forts nor castles be erected, or garrisons main- 
" tained without their own consent."* 

Her subsequent conduct has been the theme of lofty pane- 
gyric with all the historians. She took advantage of the sud- 
den death of a governor named by Cromwell, to restore the 
royal officers, and proclaimed Charles II. even before intelli- 
gence was received of the demise of the Protector. The spirit 
which produced these exploits, descended without interruption 
or enervation, and proved its identity and divinity in the reso- 
lutions offered by Patrick Henry, in 1765; in the propositions 
for a general congress, and in the Declaration of Independence. 

The career pursued by Massachusetts from her birth, 
is pre-eminent for daring, as well as dexterity, and may 
be considered in these respects as unique in the annals of the 
world. To the charter, as containing a confirmation of some 
portion of her natural liberty, she clung with a pertinacious- 
ness, under every vicissitude and pressure, which must awaken 
in all generous breasts, a thrilling sympathy, and a lively admi- 
ration. Diminutive as she was in 1635, yet, when a rumour 
reached the colonies, that the measure of a general govern- 
ment for New England had been decided upon at the British 
Court, her magistrates and clergy agreed unanimously that, 
*■'' if such a governor were sent, the colony ought not to accept 
him, but to defend its lawful possessions." When her patent 
was demanded in 1638, by order of the king in council, it was 
answered, that if the charter should be taken away, the people 
would remove to another place, and confederate under some 
new form of government; and " such was their resolution," 
says the historian Hutchinson, " that they would have sought 
a vacuum domiciliwn^ (a favourite expression with them,) in 
some part of the globe, where they would, according to their 
apprehensions, have been free from the control of any Euro- 
pean pov.'er."! We have the evidence of one of the spies of 

* See vol. ii. chap. ii. of Burk's History of Virginia : — for the entire con- 
vention, and a just commentary upon the magnanimous depoilment of tlii: 
colony. 

t Vol. i. p. sr, 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

Archbishop Laud, in the colony, that it was, at this period of si 
her history, accounted perjury and treason in her General ^ 
Court, to speak of appeals to the king. 

In 1641, the General Court established the one hundred laws, 
called the Body of Liberties. The strain of them, so abhorrent 
and advantageously distinguished from the genius of the cotem- 
porary legislation in England, shows with what fearless deter- 
mination these pilgrims marched up to their invariable object, 
of civil and religious freedom. The memorable league of the 
New England Plantations, in 1643,* is another proof of the 
independent and confident spirit with which they provided 
for their own protection, " It originated," says Chalmers, 
'' with Massachusetts, always fruitful in projects of indepen- 
dence. No patent legalized the confederacy, which continued 
until the dissolution of the charters, in 1686. Neither the con- 
sent nor approbation of the governing powers in England was 
ever applied for or given. The principles upon which this 
famous association was formed were altogether those of self- 
government, of absolute sovereignty."! Massachusetts saw 
from the beginning, the true bearing of the acts of navigation 
of 1651 and 1660, and of the custom house duties prescribed 
in 1672, upon her interests and natural rights, and she evad- 
ed or resisted them, until the whole weight of the mother 
country was turned to their enforcement. The officer sent 
from England, to collect the customs at Boston, was recalled, 
upon his representation, " that he was in danger of being pu- 
nished with death, by virtue of an ancient law, as a subverter 
of the constitution." When taxed with disobedience, the Ge- 
neral Court did not hesitate to allege, that " the acts of navi- 
gation were an invasion of the rights and privileges of the sub- 
jects of his majesty in that colony, they being not represented 
in Parliament; and that, according to the usual sayings of the 
learned in the law, the laws of England were bounded within 
the four seas, and did not reach America^'' Some of the other 
provinces joined in this language, and were equally hardy in 
their practice. Massachusetts, from the outset, openly con- 
tended against the doctrine, that Parliament had a right to 
make laws binding the colonies in all cases whatsoever; she 
denied the competency of that body to impose any tax upon 
^em, without the consent of their legislatures. Her theory, 
on this head, was solemnly proclaimed in 1692, and embo- 
died in one of the laws which she then framed under the new 

* See vol. i. of Trumbull's History of Connecticut, for a detailed account 
of this confederation, 
f Chap. viii. Annals. 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

I- charter received from William. In 1663, Rhode Island for- 
^^ mally enacted it, as one of her privileges, that no tax should 
be imposed on, or required of the colonists, but by the Gene- 
ral Assembly. The Assembly of New York nobly passed reso- 
lutions to the same purport, in the beginning of the eighteenth 
century. As early as 1624, the Assembly of Virginia had set 
the example of asserting this principle as fundamental. 

Massachusetts manifested a strong predilection for the 
cause of the independents in England, during the civil wars ; 
but she resisted the attempts of the Long Parliament upon the 
sacred charter. Being strongly advised, in 1641, when suf- 
fering much domestic distress and embarrassment, to solicit 
parliamentary aid or patronage, she steadily refused, with a 
train of reasoning, which well deserves to be noted.' — " If we 
place ourselves under the protection of Parliament, we must 
be subject to all such laws as they should make, or at least, 
such as they might impose upon us, in which course, though 
Parliament might intend our good, yet it might prove very 
prejudicial."* 

The carriage of the northern colonies, on the restoration, 
when all England fell prostrate before the monarchical page- 
ant, may be best told in the angry language of the loyal Chal- 
mers. " The people of New England received the tidings of 
that interesting event with a caution bordering on incredulity; 
announced the king in a manner almost insulting; and submit- 
ted not to the resolutions of the supreme power, till they had, 
by their orvn resolves^ declared their oxvn privileges.** The 
affectionate reception which Connecticut gave to the regicides, 
even after their attainder by Parliament, who here enjoyed a 
long life of miserable security, and died in peace, sufficiently 
demonstrates her principles and attachments. f She received 
the royal commissioners with studied indifference, and with a 
fixed resolution to deride their authority and disobey their 
commands.":}: 

* Hutchinson, chapter i. 

f The regicides, to whom our author refers, were "Whalley and Goffe, 
men of great abilities and accompHsh ments, of a noble spirit, and winning 
demeanour. The conduct of the people of New England towards them, 
does not, methinks, suffer in the comparison with the procedure related in 
the following passage of Evelyn's Memoirs : "This day the 30th of Jany. 
1660, were the carcases of those ai'ch rebells Cromwell, Bradshaw, the 
judge who condemned his majesty, and Ireton, sonn-in-law to ye usurper, 
dragg\l out of their superb tombs in Westmr* among the kings, to Tyburn, 
and hang'd on the gallows there from 9 in ye morning till six at night, and 
then buried under that fatal and ignominious monument in a deepe pit, 
thousands who had seen them in all their pride, being spectators." (Vol. 
i. p. 3ir.) 

\ Chapter xii. Annals. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 

New England generally, prohibited all appeals to the par- SEi 
Hament or the king in council; and Massachusetts in particu- ''■^ 
lar, fined and imprisoned certain persons, for designing to so^ 
licit parliament to revise a sentence of the General Court. 
This body, on the arrival of the commissioners sent by Charles 
II. in 1665, to investigate and regulate the affairs of New 
England, put them under close supervision; refused to recog-. 
nize their authority, or to impose the oath of allegiance required 
from the people, unless with nice restrictions and limitations; 
counteracted all their proceedings, and resolved " to adhere to 
the patent so dearly olitained and so long enjoyed by undoubted 
right in the sight of God and man." The commissioners would 
seem to have been imbued with something of the spirit which 
actuates the modern English critics. One of their letters, to 
the general court, dated in 1668, begins thus: " We have re- 
ceived a letter from your marshal, subscribed by the secreta- 
ry, so full of untruth, and in some places wanting grammar 
construction^ that we are unwilling," &c. The account which 
Chalmers gives of the conclusion of their transactions in 
Massachusetts, is an amusing picture of the temper of both 
parties. 

" The commissioners at length peremptorily asked the general court, ♦ Do 
you acknowledge the royal commission to be of fall force to all the purposes 
contained in it ?' But, to a question at once so decisive and embarrassing, 
the general court excused itself from giving a direct answer, and chose 
rather to ' plead his majesty's charter.' The commissioners, however, at- 
tempting to hear a complaint against the governor and company, the gene- 
ral court, with a cliaracteristic vigour, published by sound of trumpet, its 
disapprobation of this proceeding, and prohibited every one from abetting 
a conduct so inconsistent with their duty to God and their allegiance to the 
king. And, in Mav, 1665, the commissioners determined * to lose no more 
labour upon men, who misconstrued all their endeavours, and opposed the 
.ro3'al authority.' They soon after departed, threatening their opponents 
' * with the punishment which so many concerned in the late rebellion had 
%net with in England.' "* 

All the agents of New England with the British govern- 
ment, had it in especial charge " to consent to nothing that 
should infringe the liberties granted by charter." 

The manner in which Connecticut frustrated the attempt 
of Andros, in 1675, to acquire for the Duke of York the 
country lying westward of the Connecticut river — the discom- 
fiture of the same tyrannical viceroy of the Stuarts, when he 
endeavoured, in 1687, to possess himself of her charter — his 
deposition and imprisonment by the people of Boston, in 1689, 



Chap. xvi. Annals. 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

J- and the resumption, by all the New England provinces, of 
'^ their abrogated charters and forms of government, even be- 
fore they received any certain intelligence of the success of 
William in England — the re-establishment, in 1668, of the 
authority of Massachusetts over New Hampshire, by the ge- 
neral court, in defiance of the royal authority* — the violent 
subversion, in 1672, of the proprietary government in New 
Jersey — the insurrectionary movements of Albemarle in 1677 
— the revolution of 1719 in South Carolina — the successful 
struggles of the general court of Massachusetts, between the 
years 1721 and 1730, v/ith the j-oyal governors of that inter- 
val, backed as they were by the countenance of the crown — 
are all so many additional incidents, which may be singled 
out of a multitude, to exemplify the passionate zeal, the 
fearlessness, and activity of the first generations of Ameri- 
cans, in the cause of civil liberty; as their institutions may 
be cited to prove their clear discernment of its true prin- 
ciples and appropriate forms. England possessed, in the 
seventeenth century, some votaries to the same cause, of 
the largest views and boldest determination : but the true 
model of freedom was, as I have already intimated, neither 
sought nor comprehended by the nation in general. This is 
palpable from the despotic genius of the Commonwealth, and 
the kindred spirit of the Restoration The main spring and 
principle of the civil wars^ and even of the revolution of 1688, 
was religious rancour; not the desire or intelligence of political 
liberty — an object always subordinate to the gratification of 
fanatical hate, and the acquisition of inordinate power. It is 
said by Hume, that the British were, in the time of Charles I., 
and till long after, of all the European nations, the most 
under the influence of that religious spirit, which tends to in- 
flame bigotry and beget desperate factions. " The Scotch 
nation," he adds, " plainly discovered, after the restoration, 
that their past resistance had proceeded more from the turbu- 
lency of their aristocracy, and the bigotry of their ecclesiastics, 
than fiom any fixed passion towards civil liberty." 

The NcAV England plantations could not feel, and did not find 
themselves, secure in their distance from the British court. 
Whatever influence the circumstance of this distance might be 
supposed to exert in bracing their spirit, it must have been more 
than counteracted by the immense disparity of strength, and 
the belief, that, if pressed, a new emigration was their only 



* Chalmera, chap. xix. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 

resource. Their situation altogether, — apparently so forlorn and SEC 
critical,— had a stronger tendency to inspire docility and sub- ^"■^ 
mission to the house of Stuart, than the relative position of 
the British people. But let the language and countenance of 
the government of New England, in the year 1685, be com- 
pared with those of the British parliament, towards James II. 
at the same period. " The parliament," says Hume,* " pro- 
ceeded to examine the dispensing power, and voted an address 
against it. The address was expressed in the most respectful 
and submissive manner, yet it was very ill received by the 
king, and his answer contained a flat denial. The Commons 
were so daunted with this reply, that they kept silence a long 
time; and when Coke, a member from Derby, rose and said, 
* I hope we are all Englishmen, and not to be frightened by a 
few hard words,' so little spirit appeared in that assembly, 
often so refractory and mutinous, that they sent him to the 
tower for bluntly expressing a free and generous sentiment. 

" On their next meeting, they very submissively proceeded 
to the consideration of the supply demanded by the court, and 
even went so far as to establish funds for paying the sum voted 
in nine years and a half. The king, therefore, had, in effect, 
almost without a struggle, obtained a total victory over the 
Commons ; and instead of contesting an additional revenue to 
the crown; and rendering the king in some degree independent, 
contributed to increase those imminent dangers, with which 
they had so good reason to be alarmed." 

I shall have occasion, as I proceed with the main subject, 
to notice so many brilliant traits of civil courage, in the ca- 
reer of the colonists, that I ought to be satisfied with what 
I have adduced; and it is not, moreover, a part of my plan, 
to particularize here, their heroic proceedings after the passage 
of the stamp act; these are sufficiently emblazoned in the 
admiration expressed by the most respectable voices and pens 
of England herself. But I must be indulged with culling 
from the history of Massachusetts a couple of incidents more, 
as contrasts to the anecdote just quoted from Hume. When 
Andros, as governor general of New England, by the appoint- 
ment of James 11. imposed, in the beginning of 1688, a tax of 
a penny in the pound on all the towns under his government, 
the selectmen (municipal officers) of those of Massachusetts, 
particularly of Ipswich, voted, "that inasmucli as it was against 
the common privileges of English subjects, to have money 
raised without their own consent given in an assembly or par- 
liament; therefore they would petition the king for liberty of 
an assembly before they made any rates" — nor did they yield 

* Chapter Ixx, 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

" I' the point, although put to the test by imprisonment and heavy 
■^^ fines.* The other case is of the year 1761. In that year, the 
governor of the colony, Bernard, took upon himself to equip 
the province sloop Massachusetts, upon a more expensive scale 
than that prescribed by the House of Assembly, or than what 
was called, " the old establishment." On receiving from 
him a message relating to it, the house immediately prepared, 
and voted by a large majority, an answer which contained the 
following passages: "Justice to ourselves and our constituents 
oblige us to remonstrate against the method of making or in- 
creasing establishments, by the governor and council. It is, 
in effect, taking from the House their most darling privilege, 
the right of originating all taxes." 

" No necessity can be sufficient to justify a House of Repre- 
sentatives in giving up such a privilege ;yb>- it xvould be of little 
consequence to the people^ xvhether they xvcre subject to George 
or Loui.-i, the king of Great Britain or the French king^ if both 
■were arbitrary, as both xvotdd be, if both could levy taxes with' 
out parliament.'''' 

9. The most prejudiced of the English writers have scarcely 
ventured to decry the domestic morals and habits of the early 
colonists. Industry, order, temperance, and the social affec- 
tions were demonstrated by the rapid increase of their means, 
comforts, and numbers, and by the stability of their institu- 
tions. The rarity of political changes, or intestine dissen- 
tions, of domestic origin, after the several communities were 
formed, is in itself, adequate proof of the general subordina- 
tion to the authority of law and reason. Hutchinson men- 
tions that " in the Massachusetts colony, for the first thirty 
years, although the govei'nor and assistants were annually 
chosen by the body of the people, yet they confined themselves 
to the principal gentlemen of family, estate, understanding, 
and integrity;" and that "there were instances in the char- 
ter governments of Connecticut and Rhode Island, where 
the representatives had virtue enough to withstand popular 
prejudices, when the governor's council had not."f The 
question of restoring to New England, the charter suppressed 
by James II., was submitted, after the accession of William III. 
to Hook, an eminent lawyer of the British capital. This 
enlightened individual, in pronouncing in the affirmative, did 

* See "A Narrative of the Miseries of New England, by reason of an arbi- 
trary government erected there by James II." This curious pamphlet, 
which arraigns with the utmost severity the administration of Andros, was 
printed in Boston dnring- what it calls " his tyrannic reign," and re -printed 
in the same place in the year 1775. 

f Vol. ii. chap. i. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

not hesitate to describe the colonists as " a people who had SEC 
rriaintained civility beyond any other on earth.'''* The authors ^-^ 
of the modern part of the Universal History, referring to the 
same era, remark, that " the police of the inhabitants of New 
England, with regard to their morals, surpassed that of any 
in the world." Such was their reputation for discipline and 
virtue, that the pious of the mother country sent over their 
children for education. The legislators of New England 
were, indeed, exorbitantly austere with respect to the elegant 
recreations of civilized life : They prohibited, moreover, 
horse racing, cock fighting, bull and bear baiting. In exclud- 
ing these vulgar and vicious sports, they certainly did not suf- 
fer in the contrast with those who, in Britain, tolerated such 
pastime as the following of which we read in Evelyn's Me- 
moirs: "There was now (April, 1667,) a very gallant horse 
to be baited to death with dogs.— ^They run him through with 
their swords, when the dogs did not succeed," &c. 

Religion was the fundamental order of society, and univer- 
sally cultivated, in all the colonies north of the Potomac, ex- 
cept New York. Even in this province, into whose political 
being it had not entered as an element, as in the case of Penn- 
sylvania and New England, it flourished in considerable vi- 
gour and diffusion. Throughout New England, the first 
measure in the organization of the commonwealths, was to 
establish a system by which all should partake of religious 
worship and instruction. The representation which was 
made officially in 1680, to the Committee of Plantations, 
concerning the condition of Connecticut in this respect, ad- 
mits of being applied to the whole of New England. " Great 
care is taken of the instruction of the people of Connecti- 
cut in the Christian religion, by ministers catechising and 
preaching twice every Sabbath, and sometimes on lecture 
days ; and also by masters of families instructing and teach- 
ing their children and servants, which the law commands 
them to do. We have twenty-six to^vns and there are 
twenty-one churches in them, and in every one there is a 
settled minister." 

A mild, steady, sedulous piety, very little polemical or 
fanatical, distinguished the founders of Pennsylvania ; spread 
its purifying and quickening influence over the new settlers 
of every nation and sect, and gave a permanent complexion 
of efficacious faith to that province. New Jersey had risen 
under the same fortunate auspices, and wore a similar 
aspect. To the excellent religious character of Maryland, 
during the seventeenth century, even Chalmers bears tes- 

VOL. I.— I 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

r I. timonyy in opposition to those who, out of a charitable abo- 
"^ mination ot the bare existence of Popery, and in order to 
persuade the Archbishop of Canterbury of the necessity of an 
estabhshed Protestant religion in the province, scrupled not 
to paint it as a " Sodom of uncleanness, and a pest house of 
iniquity."* Virginia was devoted to the Church of England ; 
supported a numerous clergy, upon a most liberal establish- 
ment; and in all her ecclesiastical arrangements, as they are 
detailed by the historian, Beverley,f manifested a lively and 
honest solicitude for the diffusion and decency of divine wor- 
ship. In her feelings on this head, Burk finds a satisfactory 
solution for her tenacious adherence to the royal cause. His 
observations are sufficiently remarkable to be copied. " The 
measures of the patriots in England, manifestly tended to a 
complete alteration, or rather abolition, of the forms and dis- 
cipline of that church, which the Virginians had been accus- 
tomed to revere ; and the Puritans, whom they held in abhor- 
rence, appeared as the principal agents in this scheme for the 
destruction of religion." " Tliis^ I apprehend, was the prin- 
cipal, if not the only motive for their new bom ardour, in fa- 
vour of royalty. Their political attachments were obviously 
on the other side ; and in the career of liberty and resistance, 
they had even anticipated and outstripped the Parliament. 
They had the same marked regard for their rights and privi- 
leges, as this illustrious body ; they resisted with equal ardour, 
and for a long time, with greater success, the encroachments 
and the insolence of the crown.":]: 

For the practical religion of Great Britain, during the se- 
venteenth century, I refer my readers to any the most national 
of her historians. In marking the furious, desolating fanati- 
cism of the Roundheads, Hume admits, that riot, disorder, and 
infidelity prevailed very much among the partisans of the 
church and monarchy. The mutual hatred and excitement of 
sects gave, he remarks, just reason to dread, at every moment, 
*' all the horrors of the ancient massacres and proscriptions."^ 
A state of faction and rebellion, of political and religious dis- 
sention, inflamed into sanguinary wars, was but little favour- 
able to morals, and necessarily produced a general taint, which 
would not soon, if ever, be completely expelled. Its effects 
are visible to us in the literary works which are in our hands, 
and which justify the observation of Hume, that, of all the 

* See Chalmers' Political Annals, chap. xv. 

f History of Virg-inia, from 1585 to 1780, b. iv. c. vii. 

k History of Virginia, vol. ii. c. ii. 

§ History of England, chap. Ixii. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

-considerable writers of the age of the two last Stuarts, *' Sir SE( 
William Temple is almost the only one who kept himself alto- ^•^' 
gather unpolluted by that inundation of vice and licentiousness 
which overwhelmed the nation.''''* The fidelity of the general 
picture drawn by the same master hand, has never been ques- 
tioned. " The people, during the reign of Charles II. and 
James II. were, in a great measure, cured of that wild fana- 
ticism, by which they had formerly been so much agitated. 
Whatever new vices they might acquire, it may be doubted, 
whether, by this change, they were, in the main, much losers 
in point of morals. By the example of the king and the cava- 
liers, licentiousness and debauchery became very prevalent in 
the nation. The pleasures of the table were much pursued. 
Love was treated rather as an appetite than a passion. The 
one sex began to abate of the national character of chastity, 
without being able to inspire the other with sentiment or deli- 
cacy. The abuses in the former age, arising from overstrain- 
fed pretensions of piety, had much propagated the spirit of ir- 
religion ; and many of the ingenious men of this period, lie 
under the imputation of Deism. The same factions which for- 
merly distraQted the nation were revived, and exerted them- 
selves in the most ungenerous and unmanly enterprises against 
each other."^ 

10. The parliamentary party in England ostentatiously con- 
temned all human learning, and were wholly indifferent to the 
object of general education. The American colonists had 
scarcely opened the forests, and constructed habitations, when 
they bent their attention to that object. As early as 1637, only 
a few years after the landing at Plymouth, — the legislature of 
Massachusetts founded and endowed, for the ancient languages, 
and higher branches of learning, a college which began to con- 
fer degrees in 1642, and has since ripened into an university 
of the first class both in extent and usefulness. To this insti- 
tution, the plantations of Connecticut and New Haven, as long 
as they remained unable to support a similar one at home, 
contributed funds from their public purse, and sent such 
of their youth as they wished to be thoroughly educated.:}: 



* Ibid. chap. Ixxi. 

t Ibid. 

k " The Rev. W. Sheppard wrote, in 1644, to the commissioners of the 
.united colonies of New England, representing the necessity of further as- 
sistance for the support of scholars at Cambridge, wliose parents were needy, 
and desired them to encourage a general contribution through the colonies. 
The commissioners approved the motion ; andj for the encouragement of 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

r !• It seems almost incredible, how much was accomplished in 
"**^ this way, in the very formation of the settlements. On the 
death of the first literary emigrants, natives of Massachusetts, 
taught in the province, were qualified to fill the void ; and not 
a few of the first alumni of Harvard College attained to consi- 
derable literary and political distinction in the mother countrj'. 
But what is chiefly remarkable, is the provision made for the 
education of the body of the people, then and in all future 
time. As a specimen of the arrangements common to the 
New England colonies, I will state those of Connecticut. By 
her first code of 1639, every town, consisting of fifty families, 
was obliged by the laws, to maintain a good school, in which 
reading and writing should be well taught ; and in every coun- 
try town a good grammar school was instituted. Large tracts 
of land were given and appropriated by the legislature, to af- 
ford them a permanent support. The selectmen of every town 
were obliged by law to take care that all the heads of families 
should instruct their children and servants to read the English 
tongue well. 

We have read a very eloquent speech of Mr. Brougham, 
on the education of the Poor, pronounced in the British House 
of Commons (May, 1818,) in which he lavishes compliments 
and congratulations upon Scotland, for her system of parish 
schools. He declares, that the attention which she had be- 
stowed, in early times, upon the subject of national education, 
refliected immortal honour upon her inhabitants, and that it had 
given them the most enviable characteristics, as well as the 
happiest fortunes. It was only, however, as he correctly states, 
in 1696, that the scheme of extending the means of instruc- 
tion to the poorer classes, was rendered effectual, by what he 
styles " one of the last and best acts of the Scottish Parlia- 
ment," — " a law justly named among the most precious lega- 
cies which it bequeathed to its countr5.%" If the merit and the 
felicity of Scotland on this score, be so great, how is not New 
England exalted and blessed! — where, in the midst of dangers 
and labours the most arduous in which a community of men 
could be involved, the system so justly commended by the Bri- 
tish orator, was earlier, and has been, I can venture to assert, 
more uniformly and completely carried into effect. 



literature, recommended it to the general courts in the respective colonies, 
to take it into their consideration, and to give it general encouragement. 
The general courts adopted the recommendation, and contributions of grain 
and provisions were annually made, throughout the united colonies, for the 
charitable end proposed."— Trumbull's History of Con. vol. i. ch. viii. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

The outcasts of England, in the first part of the seventeenth SEC 
century, brought hither with them, that sense of the importance '-^^ 
and beauty of national education, which their descendants 
have constantly cherished, and to which England herself, with 
all her boasted illumination, is now only and reluctantly come. 
It is but lately, that her government and her politicians re- 
garded and treated the universal diffusion of knowledge, — ^the 
instruction of the lower classes, particularly — as a critical, not 
to say pernicious theory. " About eleven years ago," said Mr. 
Brougham, in the speech to which I have referred, " Mr» 
Whitbread broached the subject of the education of the poor. 
His benevolent views met with great opposition. He had strong 
prejudices to encounter even in men of high character and ta- 
lents. It is melancholy and even humiliating to reflect that 
Mr. Wyndham, himself the model of a finely educated man, 
should have stood forward as the active opponent of national 
education. He was followed by persons who, with the servile 
zeal of imitators, outstripped their master, and maintained, 
that if you taught ploughmen and mechanics to read, they 
would thenceforward disdain to work."* 

11. In partitioning the vast region of North America among i 
mercantile companies and rapacious courtiers, the monarchs 
of England were wholly unmindful of the interests of the abo- 
rigines. The soil was granted, as though the Indians had no 
claim or want, distinct from those of the wild beast ; and if the 
settlers had placed them on the same footing, expelled them 
alike from their lairs, and hunted them together to destruc- 
tion, they might have pleaded the tacit warrant of the mother 
country. But they acted in a very different spirit from that 
in which the royal patents were framed; — they purchased with 
their own estates, the supposed title of the natives. Almost 
every foot of territory occupied by the whites in New Eng- 
land, at the distance of many years from the formation of 
their communities, and until wars of extermination were 
commenced against them by the Indians, was thus acquired. 
Abundant and well merited honour has been paid to Penn, for 
his conscientious dealings in this respect. As much is due, 

* " Nobody can have forgotten the murmurs and dissonant clamours, with 
which the first proposal for communicating- the blessings of education to the 
great body of the people was lately received." — Edinburgh Review, 1814. 

" We well remember, when all attempts to educate the lower classes, 
were at once clamoured down by the real or pretended apprehensions, that 
such education would disturb the order of society, and would only render 
the poor discontented and impatient." — Bell's Weekly Messenger, Decem- 
ber, 1818. 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

pr I. however, to the founders of the New England colonies ; to 
■-^^ those of Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina. The 
Plymouth colony in 1621, and that of Massachusetts in 1629; 
in 1633, Calvert and his band of Roman Catholics; and Ro- 
ger Williams and his associates, in 1634, set the example of 
that Christian course, which is so properly admired and ex- 
tolled in Penn. " To lay a foundation for a firm and lasting 
friendship," says Dummer, after the historians, " they called 
assemblies of the Indians, to inquire who had a right to dis- 
pose of their lands, and being told that it was their sachems 
or princes, they thereupon agreed with them for what districts 
they bought, publicly, and in open market." It became, finally, 
in all the settlements undertaken by the great proprietors, a 
fundamental principle, that territory was to be purchased from 
the aborigines ; and this principle did not spring from the 
plantation office at Whitehall, but was rendered necessary to 
the interests of the proprietors by the example just mentioned, 
and the dispositions of the settlers. 

The civilization and conversion of the Indians early shared 
the attention and the resources of the middle and northern co- 
lonists, and of the southern planters also, though in a less de- 
gree.* In 1646, the general court of Massachusetts passed 
an act to encourage the propagation of the gospel among the 
natives, and associations of clergymen were formed for the 
purpose, under its auspices. The work was then prosecuted 
with apostolical ardour and devotion, — upon the true maxim 
in the case — that ** the Indians must be civilized, in order to 
being christianized." The attention of the English nation was 
not excited to the subject, until accounts were published in 
England, of the remarkable progress of the New England 
missionaries. In 1649, Winslow, the agent of the united co- 
lonies, at the British court, extorted from the parliament, by 
pressing instances and glowing exhortations, an act, which in- 
corporated a society for the benefit of the " poor heathens," 
and which recommended to the good people of England and 
Wales to contribute to its pious objects by a general collection, 
inasmuch as the " New England people had exhausted their 
estates in laying the foundations of many hopeful towns and 
colonies in a desolate wilderness." 



* See Dummer's Defence of the Charters : and Burk's History of Vir^^i- 
nia, vol. ii, chap. ii. The regulations of the assembly of Virginia, in 1654, 
were replete with humanity as well as good sense. Here, as well as in New 
England, to preserve the Indians from being overreached, all persons were 
forbidden to purchase land from them, without the approbation of the as- 
sembly. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

Although letters were published besides, at the solicitation SEC 
of the American agents, from the two universities of Oxford ^^^' 
and Cambridge, calling upon the ministers of Britain to stir up 
their congregations to the promotion of so glorious an under- 
taking, yet, according to Hutchinson, great opposition was 
expressed to the collection in England; and it went on so 
slowly that an attempt was made to raise a sum out of the 
army."* This, too, yielded but a poor harvest. The evangeli- 
cal charity of England and Wales kindled, however, as the 
fame of the New England missions increased, and at length, 
on the accession of Charles II., the society, incorporated in 
1649, found itself in possession of six or seven hundred pounds 
a year. But as this income arose out of an act of the Com7non- 
xvealth-parlmment^ it was in danger of being confiscated by the 
crown, and was saved at last, only through the interest which 
some of the patrons of the institution happened to possess at 
court. This fund was committed to some of the old magistrates 
and ministers of New England, and the historians concur in the 
allegation, that never was one of the nature more faithfully ap- 
plied. Notwithstanding, it was near being wrested from them, 
in the time of James II., and transferred to much less scrupu- 
lous custody, by authority of the archbishop of Canterbury. 

Meantime the assemblies of New England allotted tracts 
of land to such Indians as were likely to become Christians; 
supplied them with building materials and household utensils; 
and assisted in ever}'^ way, the unremitting efforts of the mis- 
sionary societies. The bible was translated into the language 
of the natives, and published in 1661. Schools were opened in 
the Indian settlements; the children taught to read; and such of 
these as displayed capacity^ placed in the grammar schools of 
the colonists, and even of the university at Cambridge. To 
furnish some idea of what was accomplished, I will extract 
one or two short passages on the subject, from Hutchinson. 
" In 1660, there were ten Indian towns of such as were called 
" Praying Indians, in Massachusetts. — In 1687, as appears by 
" a letter of Dr. Increase Mather, there were four Indian as- 
" semblies in that province, besides the principal church at 
" Natick. In Plymouth, besides the principal church at 
" Mashpee, there were five assemblies in that vicinity, and a 
" large congregation at Saconet. There were also six different 
*' societies, probably but small, with an Indian teacher to each, 
" between the last mentioned and Cape Cod; one church at 
" Nantucket, and three at Martha's Vineyai*d. There were 
'' in all six assemblies formed into a church state, having offi- 

* Vol. i. ciiap, i. 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 

T I. " cers, and the ordinances duly administered, and sixteen as- 
-""*^ " semblies which met together for the worship of God."* 

On these heads, of the occupation of the soil and the treat- 
ment of the Indians — our forefathers have the good fortune to 
be defended in the two works, to which the defamation of the 
American character may be said to have been specially allot- 
ted : I mean the Annals of Chalmers and the Quarterly Review. 
There is so much solidity, and, what is still more rare, so 
much liberality, in their observations, that I may be excused 
for ti-anscribing them at length. 

♦' Man," says Chalmers, "having a right to the world from the gift of the 
beneficent Creator, must possess and use the general estate according to the 
erant, which commanded him to multiply and to subsist by labour: and lit- 
tle would the earth have been peopled or cultivated, had men continued to 
live by hunting or fishing, or the mere productions of nature. The roving 
of the erratic tribes over wide extended deserts, does not form a possession 
which excludes the subsequent occupancy of emigrants from countries over- 
stocked with inhabitants. The paucity of their numbers, and their mode of 
life, render them unable to fulfil the great purposes of the grant. Consist- 
ent, therefore, with the great charter to mankind, they may be confined 
within certain hmits. Their rights to the privileges of men, nevertheless, 
continue the same. And the colonists, who conciliated the affections of 
the aborigines, and gave a consideration for their territory, have acquired 
the praise due to humanity and justice."! 

" As for the usurpation of territory from the natives, by the American 
states, he must be," says the Quarterly Review,i: " a feeble moralist, who 
regards that as an evil : the same principle upon which that usurpation is 
condemned, would lead to the nonsensical opinion of the Bramins, that agri- 
culture is an unrighteous employment, because worms must sometimes be 
cut by the ploughshare and the spade. It is the order of nature, that beasts 
should give place to man, and among men the savage to the civilized; and 
no where has this order been carried into effect with so little violence as in 
North America. Sir Thomas Moore admits it to be a justifiable cause of war, 
even in Utopia, if a people, who have territory to spare, will not cede It 
to those who are in want of room. The Quakers of Pennsylvania have 
proved the practicability of a more perfect system than he had imagined, 
and the treaty which the excellent founder of the province made with the 
Indians, has never been broken. If the conduct of the other states towards 
the natives be fairly examined, there will be found a great aggregate of in- 
dividual wickedness on the part of the traders and back-settlers, but little 
which can be considered as national guilt. They have never been divided 
among the colonists like cerfs; they have never been consumed in mines 
nor in indigo works; they have never been hunted down for slaves, nor has 
war ever been made upon them for the purpose of conquest, though the in- 
fernal cruelties which they exercise upon their prisoners might excuse and 
almost justify a war of extermination." 



* For the evangelical labours generally of the Anglo-Americans among 
the Indians, see the first volume oi' a late English work, entitled, " History 
of the Propagation of Christianity among the Heathen, since the Reforma- 
tion, by the Rev. William Brown." — 2 vols. London. See, also, 1st vol. Mass. 
Hist. Collections, for an ample account, by Daniel Gookin, general superin • 
tendant of all the Indians, &c. (1664.) 

t Book I. i No. 4. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

12. — The physical economy of the. settlements kept pace SE' 
with the moral, and is not less the subject of admiration with ^^^ 
a few of the more liberal among the English writers. Of this 
description are the authors of the Modern Universal History, 
whose account of the North American Colonies is among the 
best parts of their useful work. In tracing the early progress of 
Pennsylvania, they dwell with complacency upon " the stu- 
pendous prosperity of a commonwealth so lately planted, and 
so flourishing by pacific measures." When they have brought 
the history of New England down to the treaty of Utrecht, 
(1713,) they speak thus of her condition. 

" The inhabitants of New England, at the peace of Utrecht, 
to their native love of liberty, added now the polite arts of 
life; industry was embellished by elegance; and what would 
be hardly credible in ancient Greece and Rome, in less than 
fourscore years, a colony almost unassisted by its mother coun^ • 
try^ arose in the wilds of America, that if transplanted to Eu- 
rope, and rendered an independent government, would have 
made no mean figure amidst her sovereign states."* 

If we ascend with the same accurate reporters to an earlier 
period in the career of the people of New England, we shall 
be no less edified. 

. " In 1642, the number of English capable to bear arms 
4n New England, were computed to be between 7 or 8000. 
At this time 50 towns and villages were planted, above 40 
ministers had houses, and public works of all kinds were 
erected at public expense. All this could not have been done 
but through the almost incredible industry of the inhabitants, 
which had by this time rendered their country a near resem- 
blance of England. Fields were hedged in; gardens, orchards, 
meadows, and pasture grounds were laid out, and all the im- 
provements of husbandry took place, particularly the sowing 
of corn and feeding of cattle. As to the commercial part of 
the inhabitants, they shipped off vast quantities of fish for 
Portugal, and the Straits; besides supplying other places; 
England particularly, Scotland and Ireland. They exported 
bread and beef to the sugar islands, with oil and lumber of 
all kinds, some of which they sent to the mother country; 
and what is still more surprising, they carried on a great trade 
in ship building."! 

Some of the features in the physical condition of the Colo- 
nies, noted in the Ofiicial Reports which were made on the 
subject to Charles II. must have excited either incredulity or 

* Vol. xxxix. t ^•'i'i- 

Vol. I.— K 



CHARACTER AND MERITS, &.C. 

iT I. envy in his disquiet council. " We leave every man," said the 
*-^ Governor of Rhode Island, " to walk in religion as God shall 
persuade his heart; and as for beggars and vagabonds, we 
have none among us." " The worst cottages of New Eng- 
land," said another inspector, " are lofted: there are no beg- 
gars, and not three persons are put to death annually for civil 
offences." This representation would have been equally true 
of the middle colonies. I will not place by the side of it the 
cotemporary condition of Ireland, under the immediate domi- 
nion of Britain, when the spectacle of what exists there at 
the present day is too hideous to be endured by the imagina- 
tion. But it may be well to furnish a trifling specimen of the 
state of some of the agricultural districts of England ; and this 
shall be drawn from the journal of the faithful Evelyn. 

" August 2, 1664. — Went to Uppingham, the shire toAvn 
of Rutland; pretty, and well built of stone, which is a rarity 
in that part of England, where most of the rural villages are 
built of mud, and the people living as wretchedly as the most 
impoverished parts of France, which they much resemble, 
being idle and sluttish. The country (especially Leicester- 
shire) much in common; the gentry free drinkers." 

" August 14, 1664. — Lay at Nottingham. Here I ob- 
served divers to live in the rocks and caves," &c.* 



Memoirs, vol. i. 



la 



SECTION IIL 



OF THE DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED BY THE COLONISTS. 

1. The cheering scene which the provinces thus exhi- SEC 
bited in the beginning of the eighteenth century; the maturity ^"^ 
and stability of their institutions ; the sedateness, humanity^ 
and piety of their character, are rendered the more creditable 
and remarkable, by the disadvantages and difficulties of vari- 
ous kinds with which they had to contend. It may be said of 
them, without exaggeration, that they were the associations of 
men, — of all that have existed of civilized origin, — in whom a 
backwardness in the arrangements and improvements which 
constitute the dignity and comfort of social life ; a total neglect 
of the higher arts of civilization, and the pursuits of philan- 
thropy ; a fierce, relentless, and even ruthless character, would 
have been most natural and excusable. It was their peculiar 
lot, at one and the same time, to clear and cultivate a wilder- 
ness; to erect habitations and procure sustenance; to struggle 
with a new and rigorous climate ; to bear up against all the 
bitter recollections inseparable from distant and lonely exile; 
to defend their liberties from the jealous tyranny and bigotry 
of the mother country ; to be perpetually assailed by a savage 
foe, " the most subtle and the most formidable of any people 
on the face of the earth"* — a foe that made war the main 
business of life, and waged it with forms and barbarities un- 
known to the experience, and superlatively terrible to the ima- 
gination, of a European. 

The general situation of the first emigrants in the midst of 
a wilderness, and surrounded by an enemy of this description, 
can be imaged without difficulty, and does not require to be 
described for those to whom our common histories are familiar. 
The pictures drawn therein have been realized in part before 
our eyes, in the settlement of our western wilds. I say in part, 
because, although the immediate labours and dangers may 
have been, in some of the modern instances, as great, yet, the 
distressing, paralyzing influences for the mind, the duration of 

* Colonel Ban-e, in the House of Commons. 



DIFFICULTIES SURMOU.NTED 

r I. the principal ills, and the obstacles in the way of ultimate 
■^^ success, appear much less in the comparison. The Annals of 
Chalmers, Stith's History of Virginia, and Trumbull's Con- 
necticut, furnish a pai'ticularly striking and full detail of those 
circumstances of original adversity common to most of the 
colonies, which justify any warmth of encomium on their 
fortitude, or of admiration at their progress. Well might 
Lord Chatham exclaim, in 1774, " viewing our fellow sub- 
jects in America, in their original forlorn, and now flour- 
ishing state, they may be cited as illustrious instances to in- 
struct the world — what great exertions mankind will make, 
when left to the free exercise of their own powers." Hav- 
ing before me the accounts of the historians just mentioned, 
and present to my mind the various obstacles upon which 
I am about to touch, I am filled with new wonder at the re- 
sults sketched in my last section. I feel with additional 
force, the justice of the beautiful commemoration, which 
the contemplation of them drew from Mr. Burke, in 1764, 
and which that bright intelligence uttered, not merely as an 
orator ambitious of the meed of eloquence, but as a philoso- 
pher attentive to the ordinary march of human affairs, and 
the ordinary efficacy of human powers. " Nothing in the 
history of mankind," said he, " is like the progress of the 
American Colonies. For my part, I never cast an eye on 
their flourishing commerce, and their cultivated and commo- 
dious life, but they seem to me rather ancient nations grown 
to perfection through a long series of fortunate events, and a 
train of successful industry, accumulating wealth in many 
centuries, than the colonies of yesterday; than a set of miser- 
able outcasts, a few years ago, not so much sent as thrown 
out, on the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilderness, 
three thousand miles from all civilized intercourse."* 

2. It is conceded by the historians of every party, that as 
far as the mother country was able, in the confusion of her 
domestic affairs, or condescended, in the plenitude of her 
greatness, to bend her attention to the colonies, she pursued 
j towards them until the revolution of 1688 at least, a course 
of direct oppression. The administration of the chartered 
companies, of the proprietary governors in general, and of the 
councils and executive representatives of the Stuarts, is ac- 
knowledged on all hands, to have been burdensome and mis- 
chievous. f So far from promoting, it tended to impede the 

* Speech on American Taxation. 
f See particularly Chalmers — passim. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

growth, and break the spirit of the plantations. It was not, SE( 
therefore, by favour, but in spite of their political connexion ^'^^ 
with Great Britain, that they preserved their liberties, and 
became what they were at the end of the seventeenth century. 
The condition of the Carolinas, of New York, and New Jer- 
sey, under the proprietary rule, — of Virginia in the hands of 
the London company, and of the Stuart governors, — of this 
province and Maryland, when in the gripe of the Common- 
wealth, — of New Hampshire in that of Mason's agents, and 
of New England at large during the vice-royalty of Andros, — 
are sufficiently known to all who have read our annals. 

As soon as the long parliament was settled, it manifested 
a determination to assert and exercise an unlimited authority 
in the colonies; and by its act of navigation, and other regu- 
lations conceived in the same spirit, threw over them a set of 
fetters which did not cripple them entirely, only because they 
were loosely worn, and sometimes laid aside altogether, in 
defiance of the peering jealousy of the metropolitan govern- 
ment. The community of religious opinion, — the great bond 
of union in those days — and a marked predilection for the 
cause of the Parliament, obtained for New England, no real 
concession or substantial favour — no legal exemption from the 
navigation act. She escaped its full pressure, not by the par- 
tiality of Cromwell, as has been asserted, but by her own 
sturdy resolution to be free. Chalmers relates, in an angry 
tone, that she foiled the Parliament, and outwitted the Pro- 
tector, whom, in fact, while she addressed him in terms of 
obeisance, she always cautiously avoided to acknowledge in 
form. Virginia refused to receive the navigation act of 
1661, and was liable by her devotion to the royal side, to the 
particular displeasure of the Commonwealth: But we may 
cite, as a sample of the prevailing temper of mind in Eng- 
land, with regard to all the colonies, the instruction given to 
the fleet which the Parliament despatched, for the reduction 
of that province, " to employ every act of hostility" in case 
of refractoriness — " to set free such servants and slaves of 
masters who should oppose the parliamentary government, as 
would serve as soldiers to subdue them"* — a parental expe- 
dient, shewing the antiquity of the feeling, which prompted 
the observation of Governor Littleton in the debate of the 
British Parliament of the 26th of October, 1775 — " that if a 
few regiments were sent to the southern colonies of America, 
the negroes would rise and embrue their hands in the blood of 
their masters." 

■ r ■ • 

* Chalmers, c. v. Annals. 



DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

T I. The courageous loyalty of Virginia, although acknowledged 
i"^ and applauded on the restoration, turned still less to her ad- 
vantage than the republicanism of New England. A scheme 
of restriction and a train of measures, more prejudicial and 
galling than those of Cromwell, were pursued by Charles II. 
and his successor, towards those who boasted with truth " that 
they were the last of the King's subjects who renounced, and the 
first who resumed their allegiance." " With the restoration," 
says Chalmers, " began a series of evils which long afflicted, 
and well nigh i-uined the plantation of Virginia." One of 
these evils was, the distribution among certain favourite ad- 
herents of Charles II. in England, of a large portion of the 
soil, including cultivated estates, held by every right which 
could vest indefeasible property. " Virginia," says the writer 
whom I have just quoted, "beheld the Northern Neck^ con- 
taining one half of the whole, given away to strangers, who 
had shared neither the danger nor expenses of the original 
settlement."* 

A spoliation no less iniquitous was attempted, and partly 
accomplished by Andros, in 1688, in New England. There, 
on the lawless abolition of all the charters, a declaration 
followed, that the titles of the colonists to their lands had 
become void in consequence. By this monstrous fiction of 
tyranny, the oldest proprietors were summoned to take out, 
at a heavy cost, new patents for estates acquired by pur- 
chase from the Indians; possessed for near sixty years; de- 
fended against the inroads of a barbarous enemy, at the 
hazard of life, and improved with incessant toil and immense 
expense. Hutchinson remarks,! that according to the com- 
putation then made, all the personal estate of Massachusetts 
would not have paid the charge of the new patents required in 
that colony. A scheme of despotism and rapine so exorbitant, 
could not be long prosecuted with a people that had made such 
sacrifices for freedom, and had lost nothing of their pristine 
fervor. It was quickly terminated by the popular insurrec- 
tion at Boston, already noticed, which deposed all its abettors, 
and extinguished the government of James in New England. — 
What is called the rebellion of Bacon, in the annals of Virginia, 
sprung from grievances of equal injustice, and wanted, I am 
inclined to think, nothing but ultimate success, to make it, in 
the estimation of all, equally noble with the bold and charac- 
teristic movement of Massachusetts.:}: 

* Annals, ch. iv. 
f Vol. i. c. iii. 

# This opinion is fully sustained by Burk's narrative of Bacon's rebel- 
lion. — See vol. ii, ch. iv. History of Virginia. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

o. All the thirteen colonies, with the exception of Georgia, SEC 
were established and had attained to considerable strength, ^-^^ 
without the slightest aid from the treasury of the mother coun- j 
try. Whatever was expended in the acquisition of territory 
from the Indians, proceeded from the private resources of the 
Eui'opean adventurers. Neither the crown, nor the parlia- 
ment of England, made any compensation to the original mas- 
ters of the soil, or could lay claim to a share in the creation of 
the rich stock and fair landscape, which so soon bore testimo- 
ny to the industry and intelligence of the planters. The set- 
tlement of the province of Massachusetts Bay alone, cost 
^200,000 — an enormous sum at the era in which it was effect- 
ed. Lord Baltimore expended ^40,000 for his contingent in 
the establishment of his colony in Maryland : on that of Vir- 
ginia immense wealth was lavished; and we are told by Trum- 
bull, that the first planters of Connecticut consumed great es- 
states in purchasing lands from the Indians, and making settle- 
ments, in that province, besides large sums in the purchase of 
their patents, and the right of pre-emption. 

Within a few years after their debarkation, the settlers of 
Virginia, of New England, and of the Carolinas, were as- 
sailed by warlike tribes, decuple their number, and furious- 
ly bent on their destruction. But the mother country extended 
no succour to them in these contests ;* she furnished neither 
troops nor money ; built no fortifications ; entered into no ne- 
gociations for them; she manifested little sympathy or inter- 
est in the fate of her offspring. The sense of extreme danger, 
and the despair of aid from abroad, gave birth, in 1643, in 
New England, to the confederacy which I have already no- 
ticed, and without which, in all probability, the colonies of 
that region would have been either extirpated, or miserably 
crippled. Some of the most considerable of the Indian wars 
were immediately brought upon them by the rashness and 
cupidity of the royal governors. That, for instance, which 
is styled king William's war, — memorable in the annals of 
New Hampshire particularly — was owing to a wanton, pre- 

* This, and the facts stated in the preceding paragraph, were acknow- 
ledged in acts of parliament, and repeatedly asserted to the British govern- 
ment by the colonists, in their petitions, before as well as during the eigh- 
teenth century. Franklin told the House of Commons, in 1766, on his ex- 
amination — " The Americans defended themselves when they were but a 
handful, and the Indians much more numerous. They continually gained 
ground, and drove the Indians over the mountains, without any troops sent 
to their assistance from Great Britain." The number of Indian warriors in 
New England on the arrival of the first settlers, has been computed at eigh' 
teen thousand. 



DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

tTl. datory expedition of Andros, in 1688, against the possessions 
""^^ of a French individual, situate between Penobscot and Nova 
Scotia. 
vl It is a remarkable trait in the history of the New England 
settlers, that they did not seek, and appear to have been even 
unwilling to receive assistance from the mother country. The 
magnanimity of these jealous exiles is placed in full contrast 
with the selfishness of the British Court, by the letter of re- 
proof for their backwardness in solicitation, of the date of 
1676, from the earl of Anglesey, which Hutchinson has co- 
pied into his history.* " I received your letter," said the 
royal privy-councillor to the governor of Massachusetts, " in- 
timating the troubles unexpectedly brought upon you by the 
Indians. I must chide you, and that whole people of New 
England, that (as if you were independent of my master's 
crown, needed not his protection, or had deserved ill of him, 
as some have not been wanting to suggest, and use testimony 
thereof,) from the first hour of God's stretching his hand 
against you to this time, you have not as yet, as certainly be- 
came you, made your addresses to the king's majesty, or some 
of his ministers, &c. I can write but by guess ; yet it is not 
altogether groundlessly reported, that you are too tenacious of 
what is necessary for your preservation ; — that you are poor^ 
and yet proud. I know his majesty hath power sufficient as 
well as will, to help his colonies in distress, as others have 
experienced, and you niay in good time. He can send ships to 
help you, &c. and there are many who will not only be inter- 
cessors to the throne of grace, but to God^s vicegerent also, if 
you are not wanting to yourselves, and failing in that dutiful 
application which subjects ought to make to their sovereigns 
in such cases." 

Another striking illustration of the comparative dispositions 
of the parties, is afforded in the fact, which we have upon the 
authority of Hutchinson, f — 'that the collections made in the co- 
lony of Massachusetts for the relief of the sufferers by the 
great fire in London, and on other occasions of foreign cala- 
mity, at least equalled the whole sum bestowed upon her from 
abroad, from the first settlement to the abrogation of her char- 
ter by James II. 

While the people of New England were providing for their 
own safety, with consummate judgment, and performing pro- 
digies of valour in innumerable rencounters with the enemy, 
they had not even the consolation of escaping the reproach 

* Vol. i. chap. ii. f IbidLt 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

of pusillanimity, from the mother country. The court of James SEC 
JI. besides withholding assistance, on the pretext that it was ^-^^ 
not implored, taxed them with xuantmg- hearts to make use of 
their means of defence. A part of the nation concurred in 
this injustice ; which, even at this distance of time, causes the 
breast to swell with indignation, when the bold expeditions of 
these colonists, the prodigal effusion of their blood, and the 
hardships of their warfare, are passed in review. This emo- 
tion is not allayed, as we read, in descending through their 
history, that on the occasion of the bill, introduced into the 
British Parliament, in 1715, for the destruction of all the char- 
ter governments, the first of the charges brought against them 
was, "the having neglected the defence of the inhabitants!" 
To convey an idea of the severity and destructiveness of the 
hostilities to which they were constantly exposed, I will tran- 
scribe from the Annals of Holmes, the summary which he 
makes, of the evils of the war waged by the New England 
Confederacy, in 1675, with Philip, sachem of the Wampa- 
noags. " In this short, but tremendous war, about six hun- 
dred of the inhabitants of New England, composing its princi- 
pal strength, were either killed in battle, or murdered by the 
enemy ; twelve or thirteen towns were entirely destroyed ; and 
about six hundred buildings, chiefly dwelling houses, were 
burnt. In addition to these calamities, the colonies contracted 
an enormous debt." 

Hutchinson states, that " the accounts which were transmitted 
to England, of the distresses of the province of Massachusetts 
Bay during this contest, although they might excite compas- 
sion in the breasts of some^ yet were improved by others, to 
render the colonies more obnoxious."* In fact, in the very 
height of the calamity — at the moment when New England 
was putting forth all her strength for the retention of the soil, 
— the merchants and manufacturers of the mother country 
were clamorous, and the committee of plantations tasked, for 
measures of rigour against her, on the ground that her " inha- 
bitants had encouraged foreigners to traffic with them, and 
supplied the other plantations with those foreign productions 
which ought only to have been sent to England." While 
the earth was yet reeking with the carnage of the six hun- 
dred brave yeomen, and the smoke still issued from the ruins 
of the six hundred dwellings, a general scheme of oppression 
and disfranchisement was projected at the British Court. It 
.prescribed, without delay, that no Mediterranean passes 



* Vol. i. c. 
Vol. I.— L 



DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

E^T I. should be granted to New England, to protect her vessels 
"•"^ agahist the Turks^ till it was seen what dependence she would 
acknowledge on his Britannic majesty, and whether his cus- 
tom houses would be received." 

Most of the colonies had to subdue, and nearly to extermi- 
nate, in the outset, fierce and populous nations, aiming, within 
their bosom, at their utter destruction. Almost every indivi- 
dual of the settlers became a soldier, and was kept perpetually 
on the alert : the musket accompanied the plough, and the em- 
ployment of these may be said to have been unremittingly al- 
ternate. It is not too much to affirm, that there was more of 
military effort and suffering on the part of New England, for 
the first half century of her history, than among any equal 
number of the civilized inhabitants of Europe within the same 
period. The colonists did not merely await, and repel with 
great slaughter, the assaults of their indefatigable enemy; 
they marched to their head quarters; attacked them in their 
fortifications, and pursued them through all their recesses. 
To campaigns of wasting hardship and sanguinary, strife, were 
added general massacres, prepared by the Indians, with the ut- 
most refinement of dissimulation, during the intervals of their 
professed submission. We are told by Dummer, that, in his 
time, (1715,) many in England, who were unable to deny 
that the colonists had defended themselves, without being 
burdensome to the crown, " endeavoured to depreciate their 
conquests, as gained over a rude and barbarous people, un- 
exercised to arms." The general reply of the eloquent ad- 
vocate, on this head, contains a true representation of the 
case, and teaches us a solemn duty. " If it be considered, 
'' that the New England forces contended with enemies 
" bloody in their nature and superior in number, that they 
" followed them in deep morasses; that the assailants were 
" not provided with cannon, nor could approach by trenches, 
" but advanced on level ground : and if to this be added, the 
" vast fatigues of their campaigns, where officers and soldiers 
'' lay on the snow, without any shelter over their heads, in 
" the most rigorous winters; I say, if a just consideration be 
" had of these things, envy itself must acknowledge that their 
" enterprises were hardy and their successes glorious. And 
*' though the brave commanders who led on these troops — and 
" most of them died in the bed of honour, must not shine in 
*' the British annals^ yet their memory ought to be sacred 
" in their own country^ and there at least be transmitted to the 
-" latest posterity."* 

* Defence of the Charters. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

3. At the period of the accession of William to the British SEC 
throne, this scourge of a savage foe no longer existed in the '^^^ 
heart of the settlements; but obstacles to civil labour, and i 
causes of inordinate mortality, of the same kind, were even 
multiplied. From the year 1690, to the peace of Paris, in 
1763, the colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia, were 
engaged in almost unremitting hostilities with the aborigines 
on their borders. Their whole western frontier was a scene 
of havoc and desolation. After the establishment of the French 
at Fort Du Quesne, in 1754, the tribes of the Ohio assailed 
and laid waste the western settlements of the middle provinces ; 
and it is calculated that the colonies lost altogether by war, 
not less than twenty thousand adults, in the interval from that 
period to the peace of 1763. 

About the year 1690, the French in the north, and the 
Spaniards in the south, began to act as the instigators and 
auxiliaries of the savages, and continued for seventy-three 
years to be the springs of infinite distress and mischief to 
the Anglo-Americans. Their enmity was occasioned by the 
connexion of the latter with Great Britain; and their hostilities 
arose directly, and date exactly, from her quarrels with 
France. It is doubtful whether, if that connexion had not 
existed, they would have molested their neighbours. In 
1644, the season of the total dereliction of the British pro- 
vinces by the mother country, a formal treaty of amity was 
concluded between the French of Acadie, and the commis- 
sioners of the united colonies of New England. The French 
of Canada sent an agent, in 1647, to solicit aid from Massa- 
chusetts against the Mohawks ; which was refused from an un- 
willingness to assist in removing, what might serve as a barrier 
between the English and French colonies, in case of a rupture 
between the mother countries. A year after, when it was 
proposed by New England, to the governor and council of 
Canada, that the parties should contract an engagement to 
maintain perpetual peace, whatever might be the relations of 
the parent states, the French entered with alacrity into a ne- 
gotiation for the purpose. It failed only because they required 
the English colonists to aid them against the Iroquois ; and they 
renewed it themselves by plenipotentiaries, at a short interval 
of time, without success.* These facts warrant the supposi- 
tion, that, but for their allegiance to the British crown, the 
provinces would have been able to avert the animosities which 
proved their severest affliction, and even, perhaps, to make 
auxiliaries of the French and Spanish dependencies. It seems, 

* Universal History, vol. xxxix. p. 448. 



DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

f I- moreover, upon an attentive review of the history of France, 
"^ during the seventeenth century, almost certain, that she would 
not herself have attempted, in that period, to arrest their pro- 
gress : Afterwards, they might have defied her power. 

They could, at all events, hold the mother country re- 
sponsible for the long train of ills, which they suffered from 
the neighbourhood of the French, by referring to the treaty of 
1632, between Charles I. and Louis XIII. On this occasion, 
Charles restored to France, absolutely and without demarca- 
tion of limits, " all the places possessed by the English in New 
France, Lacadie, and Canada, particularly Port Royal, Quebec, 
and Cape Breton." An officer, in the British service. Sir 
David Kirk, had, under a commission from the crown, made 
himself master of Quebec, in 1628, during the war between 
England and France. " To this fatal treaty," says a British 
writer,"* " may be truly ascribed all the disputes we have had 
" ever since with France, concerning North America; our 
" king and his ministers being sadly outwitted by Richlieu's 
*' superior dexterity. The three places delivered up to France 
" were not, it is true, thought of the same importance then, as 
" they are since found to be ; yet it was very obvious, even then, 
'■'■ to any considerate observer, that as those French colonies 
" should increase in people and commerce, those places would 
" be of the utmost importance to France, and very dangerous 
" to England; but more especially, our parting with Port 
" Royal and Cape Breton is never to be excused, as the pos- 
" session of them by the French gave them a fair pretext for 
" settling on the south side of the river St. Lawrence, and 
" thereby claiming the rest of Nova Scotia bordering on New 
" England; whereas, had the French been strictly confined to 
" their original settlements on the north side of that river, the 
*' country is so bad and the trade thereof so indifferent, that 
" before now they would probably have quite abandoned them." 

4. At a very early period, the mother country cast the re- 
\ proach which she has constantly repeated, against the colo- 
^ nists, of provoking the Indian wars, and acquiring the domi- 
nion of the Indian territory by fraud as well as force. Bum- 
mer's Defence of the Charters, written at the commencement 
of the last century, treats of this " unworthy aspersion," as the 
honest author styles it, and as he proves it to be by unanswer- 
able suggestions. With respect to New England particularly, 



* Macpherson's Annals, vol. ii. p. 372. Chalmers holds nearly the same 
language. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

what he asserts is susceptible of abundant evidence — that " she SEC 
sought to gain the natives by strict justice in her dealings with **.^ 
them, as well as by all the endearments of kindness and huma- 
nity;" that " she did not commence hostilities, nor even take up 
arms of defence, until she found by experience that no other 
means would prevail" — and, " that nothing could oblige the 
Indians to peace and friendship, after they conceived a jealousy 
of the growing powers of the English." The congress of the 
New England league was particularly authorized, to prescribe 
rules for the conduct of the colonists towards the natives ; and 
its legislation on this head, was tempered with as much for- 
bearance and mercy, as a due regard for self-preservation 
would possibly admit. So rigid were its enactments against 
private violence, and so strict was the execution of them, that 
we have an instance of three settlers being put to death at the 
same time, for the murder of a single Indian. 

The New England colonies, far from being exasperated, as 
was natural, by the desperate and harassing nature of their 
struggle with the aborigines, into an obdurate resentment and 
mortal hate against the whole race, exerted, as I have already 
had occasion to state, unbounded zeal and generosity in 
improving the condition, and refining the character, of that 
portion of them whom they were able to propitiate. I 
believe the other provinces, to whom the British charge was 
extended, and who have been more particularly the object 
of it in recent times, to be capable of vindication ; and I am 
convinced, that the American writers who have maintained 
the contrary doctrine, have either suffered themselves to be 
hoodwinked by prejudice, or have not traced our Indian rela- 
tions in the detail requisite for the formation of a sound opi- 
nion. But if the point were not determinable by history, we . 
might at once infer from the general aims and obvious interests, 
the weakness and the wants, of the early colonists, that they 
were not the aggressors in the Indian wars. Be this, for the pre- 
sent, as it may, it cannot be denied, that after hostilities had be- 
gun to rage ; after the savage had been roused to distrust and 
vengeance — the case of the settlers was one of the most absolute 
self defence — of extreme necessity. In the contest which I 
have noticed, between Philip and New England, and in the 
similar struggles in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the 
very existence of these provinces, respectively, was at stake, 
and often in suspense. Those English writers who so loudly 
inveigh against the North American colonies for their treat- 
ment of the Indians, may be defied to detect in their annals, 
an expedient for the destruction of their inveterate enemy, like 



DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

I- that of the employment of the Spanish bloodhounds in Jamaica, 
^^ to subdue the Maroon negroes, in the year 1730, and again to- 
wards the close of the eighteenth century. Certainly, there is 
no argument urged by Dallas* or Bryan Edwards, to justify 
the recourse, on the part of the government of that island, to 
such fell auxiliaries, which would not have been available for 
the people of New England; which might not, indeed, receive 
additional force from their situation. f The pride of manhood,:{: 
the innate sympathies of kind, and the influence of religion, 
with the hardy and virtuous Puritans, must have rendered it 
impossible for them to imitate, while they professed to abhor, 
the worst of the atrocities practised by the Spaniards on the 
aborigines of the West Indies.^ 

But, in order to convict" the accusers, of a guilt of inhuma- 
nity far deeper than any with which they have ventured to 
charge their " kinsmen of America," it is not necessary tO' 
refer to their alliance, in Jamaica, with the Spanish chasseurs, 
or to their military administration in Hindostan. I would 
challenge the closest scrutiny into our history, for a parallel to 
the measure which the British commanders adopted, after the 
reduction of Nova Scotia, in 1755, of transplanting, and dis- 
persing through the British colonies, the French inhabitants 
of that province. This is a transaction in which the point at 
issue was, not existence, but the more easy retention of a con- 
quest; in which the victims were, not blood-thirsty and un- 
tameable savages, or ferocious banditti, who had aimed at the 
extermination, and whose presence seemed incompatible with 
the safety, of the conquerors ;— but " a mild, frugal, industrious, 
pious people," of whom only a few had committed any oifence, 
and who, generally, could be taxed with no more, than having 
indirectly favoured the cause, and preferred the dominion, of 
their own nation. It has always appeared to me, that the 
reason of state was never more cheaply urged, or more odiously 



* History of the Maroons, by R. C. Dallas, vol. ii. letters ix.and x. History 
of the West Indies, by Bryan Edwards, Appendix to Book H. 

f The Edinburgh Review, (No. 4,) in condemning the proceedings of the 
Jamaica government, remarks, " If, by our o-wn policy, -we have filled our colo- 
lonies ivith barbarians, let us not aggravate the original crime," &c. The 
American colonists did not originally fill the country which they acquired, 
with the barbarians whom they expelled ; they did not even, for the most 
part, intrude upon them voluntarily ; but were driven by the lash of domestic 
tyrants. 

i " Some gentlemen," says Bryan Edwards, " even thought that the co- 
operation of dogs with British troops, would give not only a cruel, but also a 
very dastardly complexion to the proceedings of government." 

§ See Note E. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

triumphant, than on this occasion ; that no proceeding, in re- SEC 
lation to the Indians, for which we have been rebuked by the '■•^^ 
British, either before or since our independence, could, by any 
ingenuity or eloquence, be made to wear an aspect of so much 
wantonness and barbarity, as the case of the French neutrals 
presents in the simplest form of recital. Although I may seem 
to fall into a wide digression, or an awkward anticipation, I 
will venture to exhibit it here in some detail, as matter of his- 
tory worthy of being more generally and accurately known. 
Retribution is due to all the parties ; to those who perpetrated 
the crime, and to the memory of the sufferers, who, with the 
Americans that received them, have been aspersed, in order to 
weaken the impression of its enormity. 

The most particular account which I have found of this 
transaction, is given in Minot's Continuation of the History 
of Massachusetts.* The historian drew his narrative from 
the manuscript journal of the American commander of the 
Massachusetts' troops, to whom the merit of the conquest of 
Nova Scotia was due. This officer, General Winslow, of an 
unexceptionable and elevated character, left upon record, the 
expression of his disgust and horror in submitting to act the 
part which was imposed upon him by the British authority, I 
transcribe some of the shocking details from Minot. 

" The French force in Nova Scotia being subdued, it only remained to 
determine the measures which ought to be taken with respect to the inhabi- 
tints, who were about seven thousand in number, and whose character and 
situation were so peculiar, as to distinguish them from almost every other 
community that has suffered under the scourge of war." 

•' They were the descendants of those French inhabitants of Nova Scotia, 
who after the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, by which the province was ceded 
to England, were permitted to hold their lands, on condition of making a 
declaration of allegiance to their new sovereign, which acknowledgment of 
fidelity was given under an express stipulation that they and their posterity 
should not be required to bear arms, either against their Indian neighbours, 
or transatlantic countrymen. This contract was at several subsequent pe- 
riods revived, and renewed to their children ; and such was the notoriety 
of the compact, that for half a century, they bore the name, and with some 
few exceptions, maintained the character of neutrals." 

" The character of this people was mild, frugal, industrious, and pious ; 
and a scrupulous sense of the indissoluble nature of their ancient obligation 
to their king, was a great cause of their misfortunes. To this we may add 
an unalterable attachment to their religion, a distrust of the rlglit of the 
English to the territory which they inhabited, and the indemnity promised 
them at the surrender of fort Beau-sejour, where it was stipulated that they 
should be left in the same situation as they were in when the army an-ived, 
and not be punished for what they had done afterwards." 

" Such being the circumstances of the French neutrals, as they were 



Chap. X. 



DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

T [. called, the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, and his council, aided by 
-^_ ■ the admirals Boscawen and Mostyn, assembled to consider of the necessary 
measures to be adopted towards them. If the whole were to suffer for the 
conduct of a part, the natural punishment would have been to have forced 
them from their country, and left them to go wherever they pleased ; but 
from the situation of the province of Canada, it was obvious that this would 
have been to recruit it with soldiers, who would immediately have returned 
in arms upon the British frontiers. It was, therefore, determined to remove 
and disperse this whole people among the British colonies, where they could 
not unite in any offensive measures, and where they might be naturalized to 
the government and country." 

" The execution of this unusual and general sentence was allotted chiefly 
to the New England forces ; the commander of which, from the humanity 
and firmness of his character, was the best qualified to carry it into effect. 
It was without doubt, as he himself declared, disagreeable to his natural 
make and temper ; and his principles of implicit obedience as a soldier were 
put to a severe test by this ungrateful kind of duty, which required an un- 
generous cunning, and subtle kind of severity, calculated to render the Aca- 
'dians subservient to the English interests to the latest hour. They were 
kept entirely ignorant of their destiny until the moment of their captivity, 
and were overawed or allured to labour at the gathering in of their harvest, 
which was secretly allotted to the use of their conquerors." 

" The orders from lieutenant governor Lawrence to captain Murray, who 
was first on the station, with a plagiarism of the language, without the spirit 
of scripture, directed that if these people behaved amiss, they should be pu- 
nished at his discretion ; and if any attempts were made to destroy or mo- 
lest the troops, he should take an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, 
and in short, life for life, from the nearest neighbour where the mischief 
should be performed." 

" The convenient moment having arrived, the inhabitants were called into 
the different ports to hear tbe King's orders, as they were termed. At 
Grand Pre, where colonel Winslow had the immediate command, four hun- 
dred and eighteen of their best men assembled. These being shut into the 
church, (for that too had become an arsenal,) he placed himself with his of- 
ficers in the centre, and addressed them tlius: 

'* Gentlemen, 

" I have received from his excellency governor Lawrence, the king'(i 
commission, which I have in my hand ; and by his orders you are convened 
together, to manifest to you his Majesty's final resolution to the French in- 
habitants of this his Province of Nova Scotia." 

" The part of duty I am noiv upon, though necessary, is very disagreeable to 
my natural make and temper, as I know it must be grievous to you -who are of 
the same species." 

" Biit it is not my business to animadvert, but to obey such orders as I re- 
ceive, and therefore, without hesitation, I shall deliver you his Majesty's or- 
ders and instructions, namely. That your lands and tenements, cattle of all 
kinds, and live stock of all sorts, are forfeited to the crown, with all other 
your effects, saving your money and household goods, and you yourselves to 
be removed from this his province." 

" Thus it is peremptorily his Majesty's orders, that the whole French in- 
habitants of these districts be removed, and I am, through his Majesty's 
goodness, directed to allow you liberty to carry off your money and house- 
hold goods, as many as you can without discommoding the vessels you go in. 
I shall do every thing in my power, that all those goods be secured to you, 
and that you are not molested in carrying them off: also that whole families 
shall go in the same vessel ; and make this remove, which I am sensible 
must give you a great deal of trouble, as easy as his Majesty's service will 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

admit ; and hope, tliat in whatever part of the world you may fall, you may SEC 
l?e faithful subjects, a peaceable and happy people." s^r- 

•« I must also inform you, that it is his Majesty's pleasure that you remaiti 
ijliSecurity, under the inspection and direction of the troops that I have the 
)(onour to command." 

" And he then declared them the King's prisoners. 
. " As some of these wretched inhabitants escaped to the woods, all possi- 
ble measures were adopted to force them back to captivity. The country 
was laid waste to prevent their subsistence. In the district of Minas alone, 
there were destroyed 255 houses, 276 barns, 155 out-houses, 11 mills, and 
1 church ; and the friends of those who refused to come in, wefe threatened 
as the victims of their obstinacy. In short, so operative were the terrors 
that surrounded them, that of twenty -four young men who deserted from a 
transport, twenty -two were glad to return of tliemselves, the others being 
shot by sentinels ; and one of their friends tvho was supposed to have been ac- 
cessary to their escape, having been carried on shore, to behold the destruction of 
his house and effects, -which were burned in his presence, as a pu7ushme7it for his 
temerity, and perfidious aid to his comrades. Being embarked by force of the 
tnusquetry, they were dispersed, according to the original plan, among the 
several British Colonies." 

Most of the English historians have slurred over this har- 
rowing drama. It is even asserted in Smollett's Continuation 
of Hume, and in the modern Universal History, that the 
Acadians were merely disarmed, and then suffered to remain 
in tranquillity ! Entick, in his " General History of the Seven 
Years War," is somewhat more candid ; and for the further 
edification of my readers, I will proceed to quote the language 
in which this reverend author — of no mean authority — relates 
and glosses so portentous an iniquity. As, moreover, his ac- 
count is the only one through which the affair is circumstan- 
tially known to the readers of English history, I am disposed 
to improve the opportunity, of placing by the side of it, the 
vindication of those whom he calumniates. 

; •• In Nova Scotia, matters did not favour the French at all in the year 1755. 
General Lawrence pursued his success, and was obliged to use much seve- 
rity, to extirpate the French neutrals and Indians, who refused to conform 
to the laws of Great Britain, or to swear allegiance to our sovereign, and had 
engaged to join the French troops in the spring, expected to arrive from 
old France, as early as possible, on that coast or at Louisbourg ; some of 
whom with .ammunition, stores, &c. fell into the hands of our cruizers off 
Cape Breton. General Lawrence did not only pursue those darigerons inhabi- 
tants -with fire and sword, laying the country waste, burning their dwellings, and 
carrying off their stock ; but he thought it expedient for his Majesty's service 
to transport the French neutrals, so as to entirely extirpate a people, that 
only waited an opportunity to join the enemy." 

" This measure was very commendable. But the execution of it was not 
quite so prudent. The method taken by the general to secure the province 
from this pest, was to distribute them, in number about seven thousand, 
among the British Colonies, in that rigorous season of winter, almost naked, 
and without money or effects to help tliemselves. In which disti'ibution, too 
many were transported to those colonies, where they might with great 

Vol. I.—M 



t)rFFICULTiES SURMOUiNTED 

IT I. ease get to the French forts, or might facilitate any enterprize from those 
^^»^ , forts, on the back of our provinces on the south of the bay of St. Lawrence. 
Besides, it was exercising a power he had no right unto. For his command 
reached not beyond the limits of Nova Scotia ; and this was loading each 
government, into which those neutrals were transported, with an arbitrary 
and great expense." 

" This may be exemplified in the case of Pennsylvania. The quota im- 
posed on that province was foiu' hundred and fifteen, men, women and chil- 
dren. They landed in a most deplorable condition at Philadelphia, to be 
maintained by the province, or turned loose to beg their bread : and this 
city not being above two hundred miles distant from fort Du Quesne, it was 
very probable the men might get unto, and join their counti-ymen at that 
fort; or strengthen the parties, which hovered about the frontiers, and 
were continually laying waste the back settlements. The government in 
order to get clear of the charge, such a company of miserable wretches 
would require to maintain them, proposed to sell them with their own con- 
sent : but when this expedient for their support was ofl^ered to their consi- 
deration, the transports rejected it with indignation, alleging. That they 
were prisoners, and expected to be maintained as such, and not forced to 
labour. They farther said, that they had not violated their oath of fidelity ; 
which, by the treaty of Utrecht, they were obliged to take ; and that they 
were ready to renew that oath, but that a new oath of obedience having 
been prescribed to them, by which, they apprehended the neutrals would 
be obliged to bear arms against the French, they could not take it, and 
thought they could not be compelled to do it. Thus general Lawrence 
'cleared the country of the French neutrals; and the Indians in their interest, 
who had been very troublesome, being most of them Roman Catholics, re- 
tired to Canada for protection."* 

The first remark I would make on this narrative of Entick, 
is, that the plan which he ascribes to the government of Penn- 
sylvania, of selling the exiles, had no existence, and was im- 
possible, consistently with its principles and powers. That 
government, and the inhabitants of Philadelphia, when near 
five hundred of them were landed in a plight of misery which 
beggars all description, received them with the liveliest com- 
passion, and provided for their wants with the readiest libe- 
rality.j Tljey were immediately committed to the charge of 

* Vol. i. p. 385. 

t I have before me an exemplification of the original subscription paper 
for their relief; and a list of the names of some of them, which runs thus: 
the Widow Landry, blind and sickly ; her daughter. Bonny Landry, blind ; 
"Widow Coprit, has a cancer in her breast; Widow Seville, always sickly; 
Ann Leblanc, old and sickly ; Widow Leblanc, foolish and sickly; the tw<r 
youngest orphan children of Philip Melanson ; three orphan children of 
Paul Bujauld, the eldest sickly, a boy foolish, and a girl with an infirmity in 
her mouth ; Baptist Galerm's foolish child; Joseph Vincent, in a consump- 
tion ; Widow Gautram, sickly, with a young child ; Joseph Benoit, old and 
sickly ; Peter Bressay, has a rupture, &c. ; Peter Vincent, himself and wife 
sickly — three children, one blind, and very young, &c. Such was the treat- 
ment which they had experienced, that notwithstanding the charitable at- 
tentions which they received after their arrival in Philadelphia, more than 
one half of them died in a short time. From these particulars we may judge 
how far they were fitted " to strengthen the parties which hovered about 
the frontiers !" 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

the conservators of the poor, to be lodged and fed at the pub- SEC 
lie expense ; while benevolent individuals of the society of "-^ 
Friends, made and collected considerable subscriptions for 
their more comfortable subsistence. One of the almoners of 
the city, on this occasion, Anthony Benezet, — a model of 
philanthropy, with whose character those of the English pub- 
lic, who have read Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the 
Slave Trade, cannot pretend to be unacquainted — devoted 
himself to the alleviation of both the physical and mental 
wretchedness of the unexpected guests. It is, probably, from 
an anecdote connected with his parental exertions in their fa- 
vour, that arose the idea which Entick embraced, respecting 
the conduct of the government of Pennsylvania. This anecdote 
is thus told by Mr. Roberts Vaux in his excellent biography 
of Benezet. *' Such was his assiduity, and care of them, that 
it produced a jealousy in the mind of one of the oldest men 
among them, of a very novel and curious description; which 
was communicated to a friend of Benezet's — ' it is impossible^ 
said the Acadian, ' that all this kindness is disinterested; Mr, 
Benezet must certainly intend to recompense himself by trea- 
cherously selling us.'' When their patron and protector was 
informed of this suspicion, it was so far from producing an 
emotion of anger, or an expression of indignation, that he lift- 
ed up his hands and laughed immoderately." 

The reverend historian was right in affirming that the Bri- 
tish commandant in Nova Scotia, imposed an arbitrary and 
heavy, and he might have added, unrequited expense upon 
the colonies, among which the neutrals were distributed ; but 
he laboured under an error in supposing that General Law- 
rence " cleared the country" at once. As many were sent 
away in 1755, as could be disposed of immediately. A consi- 
derable number remained, with whom the same course was 
pursued a few years afterwards, upon the inordinate alarm 
created by the landing of the French in Newfoundland. 

In the first instance, seven thousand of the obnoxious com- 
munity, as Entick relates, were thus torn from their rustic 
' homes, and transported in a way worthy of being compared 
with the "middle passage." The quota then assigned to Mas- 
sachusetts exceeded one thousand. " This extraordinary tax," 
says her historian Minot,* " was about to be laid anew upon 
the Province, in 1762, by the arrival of nine ships from Ha- 
lifax, with 700 French neutrals on board. By an examen 
of these people in the beginning of the year 1 760, ther^ was 

* Vol. ii. chap. v. 



DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

T I. found to be 1017 of them in the Province, of whom only 394 

''^-^were able to labour. For the expense of subsisting them^ the 

Province could procure no alloxvance from Parliament, and so 

had become subject to indefinite taxation in this way at the 

discretion of the commander in Nova Scotia." 

No proof has ever been produced, — none exists, to support 
the charges which Entick prefers against the sufferers — of hav- 
ing engaged to join the French troops, and refused absolutely 
to take the oath of allegiance to the British sovereign. On 
the other hand, their own allegations, as he reports them, and 
which give them strong titles to respect, are upheld by the te- 
nor of the official declarations of the British authorities in Nova 
Scotia, who pleaded, little more in substance, than the posi- 
tive orders of their government, and a supposed overruling 
necessity, as regarded the more secure dominion of that terri- 
tory. Tradition is fresh and positive among us respecting the 
guileless, peaceful, and scrupulous character of this injured 
people. The impression which it made here, upon every one 
who held intercourse with them, contributed to render more 
Intense, the compassion raised by the miserable vicissitude of 
their fortunes, and the extreme poignancy of their grief. 
Their descendants, now scattered over these States, received 
universally from them the same tale of injustice and woe. It 
is consigned in the Petition which they transmitted from Penn- 
sylvania to the King of Great Britain, and which bears intrin- 
sic evidence, too strong to be resisted by a feeling and unpre- 
judiced reader, of the truth of all the details.* To complete 
the history, I ought to add, that no attention whatever was 
paid to their prayer either for immediate redress, or a judicial 
hearing. 

Before I finish with this matter, I will claim permis- 
sion to moot a simple case, and propound a few natural' 
queries. — Had war broken out, in 1808, between France 
and the United States, as was expected, — and had the 
latter immediately, upon the suspicion, or the certainty, 
of the French inhabitants of Louisiana being favourably 
inclined to Bonaparte, " cleared" that province of all of 
them ; of men, and women, of the aged and the young, of the 
sick and the insane ; " pursuing them with fire and sword, 
burning their dwellings, laying waste their plantations, and 
destroying their stock" — ^had those inhabitants been driven 
off at the point of the bayonet " in the rigorous season of 
winter, almost naked, and without money or effects to help 

* See note F. for the Petition itself, copied from the draught in the hand- 
writing of Benezet. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

themselves" — ^had they been thrown in this condition^^ from SEC 
prison ships as confined and wasting as the English hulks, 
upon the charity of strangers ignorant of their language, and 
prejudiced against their race? — Or, had all this been done by 
the American commanders in Louisiana, of their own motion, 
and had the American government then refused to listen to 
the petition for relief, of that remnant of the prostrate exiles, 
which disease and grief had spared, and left them irrevo- 
cably to their fate — what would have been said in Great 
Britain ? When would the world have ceased to ling with her 
execrations upon American barbarity ? If one of her general 
officers had afterwards put to death two Americans, found and 
acknowledged to be co-operating, with a hostile tribe of sa- 
vages on the borders of Canada, — would she have suffered this 
act to be placed in the same line of atrocity ? or, however 
keen her sensibility to the effusion of her own blood, and a 
fancied outrage upon her national majesty, would she have 
ventured to denounce the execution of Ambrister and Arbuth- 
not, as equal in guilt, to the extirpation, upon such grounds 
as her historians offer in the case of the Acadians, of a civi- 
lized community of many thousands, unimpeachable in their 
private life ; confessedly amiable in their dispositions ; and 
happy in the midst of ease and abundance created by their 
industry and frugality ? 

5. Notwithstanding the notoriety of the facts upon which 
I uave touched — that the colonies were planted at the expense 
of private adventurers, fugitives from relentless persecution; 
that they formed, for the most part, their own constitutions ; 
that they fought and overcame the Indians without aid from 
abroad — that the mother country built no forts either on their 
internal or Atlantic frontier, to protect them from invasion — 
that she sent no ships of war to guard their trade, till many 
years after their settlement, when their commerce had become 
an object of revenue to the crown, and of profit to the British 
merchants — that her parliament passed no one material act 
concerning them, which did not relate to the regulation of 
trade or the enlargement of the metropolitan authority — yet, 
even before the expiration of the seventeenth century, it was 
not uncommon for the most distinguished of the parliamentary 
leaders, to hold the language which Charles Townsend 
employed in 1 765, in his speech in favour of the stamp act, 
** that the Americans were children planted by her care ; nou- 
rished up by her indulgence, and defended by her arms." I 
can trace also, to an early period, the complaints repeated b\- 



DIFFICULTIES SURMOUIVTED 

the same British minister, concerning their unthankful and 
' seditious spirit, and that niggardliness " which grudged even 
a mite to relieve the beneficent and venerable parent from the 
heavy burdens under which she groaned." When the disputes 
consequent on the stamp act grew warm, these topics were in 
the mouths of all who supported the scheme of taxation, and 
with them were plentifully mixed the prejudices concerning 
the pedigi-ee and general character of the Americans, of which 
I have spoken in the preceding section. It is among the re- 
marks made by Franklin, in his examination before the House 
of Commons, in 1766, that " America had been greatly abused 
in England, in papers, and pamphlets, and speeches, as un- 
grateful, and unreasonable, and unjust, in having put the 
British nation to an immense expense for their defence, and 
refusing to bear any part of that expense." 

" Our newspapers and politicians," said one of the ablest 
of the British writers of that day, " have been lately full of 
" invectives against the disposition and conduct of the Ameri- 
" cans, and using foul-mouthed reproach. There are indeed 
" a set of men, who, from dulness, being totally ignorant of 
" the colonies, or from pride^ ashamed to have a knowledge 
" of them^ talk of what xve^ for such is their language, have 
" done for them ; what money we have spent ; what blood we 
" have lavished; and what trouble xve have had in establishing 
" and protecting them to this day; and after a thousand such 
" self-applauses, declaim against the baseness, ingratitude, 
" and rebellion, of an obstinate, senseless, and abandoned set 
" of convicts." 

In this strain. Dr. Johnson wrote and talked, as the organ 
of the ministry. It was in vain that Barre replied to Towns- 
end with a fire and force of rhetoric worthy of Demosthenes, 
and that Burke declared to Parliament, " the colonies in ge- 
neral owe little or nothing to any care of ours — a generous 
nature has with them, taken its own way to perfection." 
Merits of every kind continued to be claimed for the mother 
country, and it was particularly insisted, that the blood and 
treasure lavished in the American wars, from 1690 to 1763, 
were spent in the cause of the colonies alone. This point had 
come particularly under discussion in the year 1760, when 
the question of surrendering Canada to the French was agi- 
tated in England. It was argued afRrmatively with great zeal, 
in a work of high authority at that time, to which Franklin 
answered by his celebrated Canada-Pamphlet. The illustri- 
ous philosopher demonstrated, that the retention of Canada was 
of the utmost importance to Great Britain; but that, though 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

desirable for the colonies as a means of preserving peace on SECT 
their borders, it would be attended with disadvantages over- ^^^^ 
balancing this consideration, which had become of the less 
moment from the military strength they had acquired, and the 
impression they had made upon the Indian nations. He took 
one particular view of their case, which belongs to history, 
and should be offered to my readers as equally striking and 
just. " I do not think that our ' blood and treasure have been 
"• expended,' as the author of the pamphlet intimates, ' in the 
*' cause of the colonies, and that England is making conquests 
*' for them;' yet I believe this is too common an error; I do 
*' not say that they are altogether unconcerned in the event. 
'' The inhabitants of them are, in common with other sub- 
*' jects of Great Britain, anxious for the glory of her crown, 
" the extent of her power and commerce, the welfare and 
" future repose of the wkole British people. They could not, 
'' therefore, but take a large share in the affronts offered to 
*' Britain; and ha^e been animated with a truly British spirit, 
" to exert themselves beyond their strength, and against their 
" evident interests. Tet so unfortunate have they heen^ that 
*' thehr virtue has made agabist them; for upon no better foun- 
" dation than this have they been supposed the authors of the 
" war, and has it been said to be carried on for their advan- 
" tage only." y 

Adam Smith strengthened the common eiTor, and unwit- 
tingly promoted the ministerial scheme of deception, by the 
following loose passage of the seventh chapter of the fourth 
book of his Wealth of Nations. — " The English colonists have 
never yet contributed any thing towards the defence of the 
mother countrj^, or towards the support of its civil government. 
They, themselves, on the contrary, have hitherto been defend- 
ed almost entirely at the expense of the mother country." 
These propositions are inconsistent with the tenor of the opi- 
nions which I have quoted from the same chapter, and have 
not the least hold in the colonial histor}'. A dh"ect and com- 
plete refutation of them is to be found in Franklin's writings. 
With respect to the war of 1756 particularly, which Adam 
Smith had, no doubt, immediately in view, the American cham- 
pion placed the question in its true light to the House of Com- 
mons, in his examination before that body. His doctrine passed 
without contradiction at the moment. " I know the last xvar 
" is commonly spoken of here as entered into for the defence, 
" or for the sake of the people in America. I think it is quite 
" misunderstood. It began about the limits between Canada 
" and Nova Scotia; about territories to which the crown indeed 



DIFFICULTIES SURMOUxNTED 

T I- " laid claim, but which were not claimed by any British colo- 
'"'^^ " ny ; none of the lands had been granted to any colonists, we 
*' had therefore no particular concern or interest in that dispute. 
*' As to the Ohio, the contest there began about your right of 
*' trading in the Indian country, a right you had by the treaty 
*' of Utrecht, which the French infringed; they seized the tra- 
*•' ders and their goods, which were your manufactures; they 
*' took a fort which a company of your merchants, and their 
" factors and correspondents, had erected there, to secure that 
" trade. Braddock was sent with an army to retake that fort, 
*' (which was looked on here as another encroachment on the 
** king's territory,) and to protect your trade. It was not till 
*' after his defeat that the colonies were attacked. They were 
*' before in perfect peace with both French and Indians; the 
*' troops were not therefore sent for their defence." 

The whole subject, including the motives and ends of what 
were called the colonial contests of the European powers, was 
taken up by Brougham, in his work on their colonial policy, 
and so treated as to be no longer a field of controversy. He has 
satisfactorily shown, that " the quarrels of the mother country 
alone were, in almost every instance, the causes which involved 
ever}- part of the empire in wars ;" that " the foreign relations 
of the colonies were almost always subservient, and postponed 
to those of the parent state;" and that, " so far from involving 
her in their quarrels^ they suffered more than any part of the 
systein^ by the proper quarrels of the metropolis.^'' 

The following desultory extracts from his first volume con- 
tain general views, which I think it important to present, upon 
such authority, and some facts, of which the force will be more 
felt, when they are so avouched. 

" The supporters of the different economical Systems have considered a 
colony as a mother country, held in subjection by another state ; not as a 
part of that state, connected with it by various ties. It appears more proper 
to view the establishment of distant colonies, as an extension of a country's 
dominions, into reg-ions which enjoy a diversity of soil and climate. While 
the colonies then are only to be viewed as distant provinces of the same 
country, it is absurd to represent their defence and government as a burden, 
cither to the treasury or to the forces of the mother country." 

" The wars which a state undertakes, apparently for the defence of the 
colonial dominions, are, in reality, very seldom the consequence, even of her 
possessing those distant territories. Two nations, who would commence hos- 
tilities on account of their colonies, would never want occasions for quarrel- 
ling, had they no possessions. In fact, any influence which the circumstances of 
the colonies can exert on the dispositions of the parent state, is much more like- 
ly to be of a nature favourable to the maintenance of peace.** Whatever effects 
may be attributed to the attention which has been paid to colonial policy, 
it is probable that instead of increasing, it has diminished the frequency of 
wars in modern times. Whatever circumstances may have involved Great 
Britain in a colonial warfare in 1739 and 1756, a little reflection will show 



BY THE COLONISTS. 

M9, that the contests were not occasioned by the possession of territories in SECT, 
America, but only broke out in that quarter of the globe, as well as in Eu- y,^^-^ 
rope, in consequence of the relations of European politics between the dif- 
ferent powers possessing territories on both sides of the Atlantic." 

" It should seem, that in ascribing to tlie possession of colonies, the wars of 
1739, 1756, and 1778, philosophers have been led into an error, not uncom- 
mon in any of the departments of science, and in none more frequent than 
in politics, — the mistake of the occasion for the cause, and of a collateral ef- 
fect for a principle of causation. They have searched in America for the 
origin of misfortunes, of which the seeds lay near home — in the mutual rela- 
tions of the European powers, the diversity of national character, and the 
[ belligerent nature of man." 

i ^ *• The colonies occasion a diversion in favour of the tranquillity and secu- 

i rity of the parent states. The strength and valour which might otherwise 

! be exerted, in committing to the chance of war the independence of the 

European powers, are displayed in the distant regions of the New World, 

and exhausted without danger to the capitals." 

" While their colonies thus render to the great maritime powers of Eu- 
rope the important service of determining (as it were) the eruption of hos- 
tilities, to the extremities, where it may spend a force that would have proved 
1 fatal to the nobler parts of the system, the structure of those distant com- 
j munities, is, in general, of a less delicate nature, and better adapted to sus- 
tain the shock of military operations." 

"The old colonies of North America, besides defraying the whole ex- 
penses of their internal administration, were enabled, from their situation, 
to render very active assistance to the mother country, upon several occa- 
sions, not peculiarly interesting to themselves. They uniformly asserted, 
thpt they -would never refuse contributions even for purposes strictly impe- 
rial, provided these were constitutionally demanded. Nor did they stop at 
mere professions of zeal." 

"The whole expense of civil government in the British North American 
colonies, previous to the revolution, did not amount to eighty thousand 
pounds sterUng; which was paid by the produce of their taxes. The mili- 
tary establishment, the garrisons, and the forts, in the old colonies, cost the 
mother country nothing." 

" In the war of 1739, when their population and resources were very tri- 
fling, they sent three thousand men to join the expedition to Carthagena. 
The privateers, fitted out in the different ports of America, and belonging 
to tlie colonies, were even in that time, both in numbers of men and guns, 
moi-e powerful than the whole British navy, at the era of its victory over the 
Spanish armada. Many parts of the colonies have, at all times, furnished 
large supplies to the naval force that was destined to protect them. The 
fisheries of New England, in particular, us5d to contribute a vast number of 
excellent seamen to the British naw." 



Vol. 1.— N 



OS 



SECTION IV. 



OF THE MILITARY EFFORTS AND SUFFERINGS OF THE COLO- 
NISTS, IN THE WARS OF THE MOTHER COUNTRY. 

I. 1. The colonies took an active part, and had even an 
w excessive share, in the almost continuous wars which Great 
Britain waged between the years 1680 and 1763. As soon 
as hostilities broke out in Europe, towards the close of the 
seventeenth centur}^, the belligerent powers industriously 
kindled the fiercest animosities between their respective Ame- 
rican dependencies. Those of the French and Spaniards 
being greatly inferior in internal strength, thought to compen- 
sate themselves for this disparity, by arraying the Indians on 
their side, and keeping their merciless auxiliaries in perpetual 
action. They animated and led them in irruptions into the 
British provinces, memorable for the worst evils which charac- 
terize Indian warfare. The destruction of the settlements of 
Port Royal, on the southern frontier of Carolina, by the Spa- 
niards of St. Augustine, in 1686, — the murderous expedition 
of the French against Schenectady and Corlar, in New York, 
and their successful attacks upon Salmon Falls and Casco, in 
1690, may be cited as specimens of what is to be considered 
as the mere prelude, to the similar hostilities with which the 
English colonists were afflicted, almost without intermission, 
for more than half a century afterwards. These began nearly 
at the same time, to act vigorously on the offensive ; less, how-' 
ever, by the proxy of the Indians whom they could attach 
to their cause, than in their own persons, and with their own 
resources. We find New England twice engaged during 
1690, in attempts upon a large scale, to reduce Canada. In 
that year, Sir William Phipps, governor of Massachusetts, 
with a fleet of eight small vessels, and eight hundred men, 
made himself master of the fort of Port Royal in Acadia, and 
took possession of the whole coast from that place to the New 

t , England settlements. Another, and more considerable arma- 
ment was despatched immediately, under the same com- 
mander, against Quebec, but it proved highly disastrous. 



MILITARY EFFORTS, &,C. 

owing to the incapacity of the royal governor.* One thousand SECT, 
■of the New England troops perished in this bold enterprise, v^^^*^ 
and the vessels employed in it were all lost on their return ; 
the colonies that had so nobly strained their means, incurred 
a debt of ^140,000, and the necessity of issuing bills of cre- 
dit — the first paper money (born in an evil hour) which is 
mentioned in our annals. The contingent of men, which 
Connecticut and New York had stipulated to send against 
Montreal, as a diversion in favour of the forces directed against 
Quebec, was arrested in camp, and dreadfully reduced by the 
small pox. This, and other malignant epidemics, made, at 
different times, great havoc throughout the North American 
communities, and are to be classed among the most formida- 
ble of the numerous obstacles to their progress. 

These enterprises of New England originated in her own 
sagacity and intrepidity. The mother country took no part 
and little interest in them. Sir William Phipps made a voy- 
age to London, in order to solicit aid and encouragement for 
the prosecution of the object, but met with no success. f " It 
would be amazing," says the Universal History, " that the 
English court should all the while express so little, or no con- 
cern, for so fine and well situated a country as Acadia, did we 
not consider that king William and the English government 
had at this time on their hands, two great wars in Europe, one 
in Ireland, and one in Flanders. Whatever had been done 
against the French in New France, was effected by the New 
England forces, without any assistance from Old England, 
farther than that the king and ministry there signed commis- 
sions.":!: The fruits of the success at Port Royal were lost 
by the restoration of the whole territory taken, at the peace of 
Ryswick. 

.In 1693, the British cabinet yielding at length to the in- 
stances of New England, undertook to assist her with a con- 
siderable force towards another invasion of Canada. The 
fleet designated for the purpose, was, however, first employed 
in an attempt upon Martinico, and experienced there, disasters 
which unfitted it for any further operations. In the mean- 
while, the colonies eagerly made preparations, in conformity 
with the plan concerted in England ; which were so great, says 
the Universal History, that they probably would have been 



* Universal Modern History, vol. xl. 

f Some years after, Colonel Schuyler, of New York, went to England, at 
Lis private expense, on the same errand. 
i Vol. xxxix. 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

successful.* In the province of New York five hundred men 
were raised for an attack upon Montreal; and this body when 
set upon by a greatly superior force of French and Indians, 
fought, adds the same authority " with inconceivable resolu- 
tion." An accumulation of debt and trouble was the only 
result for the colonies, of the whole arrangement, The French 
of Canada were emboldened by its miscarriage, to more 
harassing and destructive incursions. Three years after, the 
French court equipped a considerable fleet, destined to reta- 
liate on the British, by ravaging the coasts of New England, 
and reducing New York. No means of averting the impend- 
ing danger were neglected by these colonies ; and the only ma- 
terial injury, besides the labour and expense of considerable 
levies, which they suffered from the French plan of conquest, 
was the loss of the fort at Pemaquid, erected, most idly, 
" by the special order of king William and queen Mary," 
though at the sole and very heavy cost of Massachusetts, aqd 
of which the futility was obvious from the first, to some of the 
" poor provincials." 

When, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, intel- 
ligence was received in America, of England being again 
at war with France and Spain, hostilities were renewed 
there with the utmost animation. In 1702, South Carolina, 
with a population of only seven thousand whites, and scarce- 
ly forty years after its settlement, sent an expensive expedi- 
tion of six hundred militia, and as many Indians, against 
St. Augustine. The whole purpose was not accomplished, 
indeed, but great mischief was done to the Spaniards. " It 
is almost incredible," remarks the Universal Histor}',! ".that 
a government so lately settled as that of Carolina, and subject 
to such mismanagements from the proprietary, should under- 
take so unpromising an affair, and be so near succeeding in it 
as the Carolinians were." The mystery is to be explained by 
the spirit of its popular assembly. Under the same auspices, 
a body of Carolinians marched, the following year, against 
the Apalachian Indians, the allies of the Spaniards, acting 
under the command of a Spanish colonel; penetrated into the 
heart of their settlements; subdued and dispersed them, and 
reduced their whole territory under the British power. An 
invasion of Carolina, from the Havanna, was attempted in 
1706, by the Spaniards and French, with a formidable force, 
and most gallantly repelled and frustrated by troops assem- 
bled in haste at Charleston. Nearly one half of the assail- 
ants were either killed or taken, and the infant colony had 

* Vol. xxxix. p. 63. -j- Yo\. xxxix. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

iittle to regret on the occasion, except the heavy burden oi the SEC 
expenses incurred in the military levy. ^-^", 

2. The martial activity of the northern provinces ^vris equal- 
ly remarkable, and their suffering greater. In 1702, all the 
settlements from Casco to Wells were ravaged with fire and 
sword, by a party of Indians and French, and one hundred 
and thirty of the laborious husbandmen either killed or made 
prisoners. A large band of the same enemies surprised, two 
years subsequent, the town of Deerfield, in Massachusetts, 
laid it in ashes, and either butchered or captured the inhabi- 
tants to the number of nearly two hundred. This calamity 
was immediately and fully retorted, by an expedition of five 
hundred and fifty New England volunteers, against the I rench 
and Indian settlements of Penobscot and Passamaquoddy ; 
and but a small time elapsed before the New England govern- 
ment despatched another armament, consisting of several thou- 
sand men, to reduce Acadia. The enterprise failed, in con- 
sequence of an injudicious march in the neighbourhood of 
Port Royal, which was occasioned by the obstinacy and in- 
subordination of the officers of the Deptford man of war, un- 
der whose convoy the provincial fleet of transports had been 
sent.* The attention of New England was speedily attracted 
to her domestic safety ; for the French and Indians penetrat- 
ed, in 1708, to Haverhill, on Merrimack river, and dealt 
with that town as they had done with Deerfield. 

The subjugation of Canada continued to be urged upon the 
British court by the politicians of Massachusetts and New 
York ; but it had no relish for the ministry of the day, who, 
as the historians relate, would have preferred rather the ex- 
tension, daan the abridgment of the French power in America. 
However, in 1709, orders were received by the provinces to 
prepare for the enterprise, upon a larger scale, and were 
obeyed with the utmost alacrity. After considerable levies 
had been made, and the transports and troops kept, four months, 
in waiting at Boston for the arrival of the English fleet, it was 
announced from London, that a change in the affairs of Eu- 
rope rendered it expedient to relinquish the expedition ! 

The account which the historian of New York, Smith, has 

transmitted of this affair, developes further its character, and 

is highly creditable to the spirit of that province, " The plan 

. " of operations was concerted at New York, with Francis 

" Nicholson, formerly our lieutenant governor, who, at the re- 



* Universal History, vol. xl. p. 151. 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

' I. " quest of our governor and those of Connecticut and Pennsyl* 
^-' " vania, accepted the chief command of the provincial forces, 
" intended to penetrate into Canada, by the way of Lake 
" Champlain. Impoverished as we were, the assembly joined 
" heartily in the enterprise. Universal joy now brightened 
" every man's countenance, because all expected the complete 
" reduction of Canada before the ensuing autumn. We ex- 
" erted ourselves to the utmost. Having put ourselves to the 
" expense of above twenty thousand pounds, the delay of the 
" arrival of the British fleet spread a general discontent 
" through the country ; our forces were finally called from 
" camp, &c. Had this expedition been vigorously prosecuted, 
" doubtless it would have succeeded. The allied army tri- 
" umphed in repeated successes in Flanders ; and the court 
" of France was in no condition to give assi; .ance to so dis- 
" tant a colony as Canada. The Indians of the Five Nations 
" were engaged to join heai'tily in the attempt, and the eastern 
" colonies had nothing to fear from the Ouwenagungas. In 
" America, every thing was ripe for the attack. At home, 
" lord Sunderland, the secretary of state, had despatched or- 
*' ders to the queen's ships at Boston to hold themselves in 
" readiness, &c. At this juncture, the news arrived of the 
" defeat of the Portuguese ; the forces intended for the Ame- 
" rican adventure were then ordered to their assistance, and 
" the thoughts of the ministry entirely diverted from the Ca- 
" nada expedition. The abortion of our plan exposed us to 
" consequences equally calamitous, dreaded, and foreseen ; as 
" soon as the scheme dropped, numerous parties of the French 
" and Indian allies were sent out to harass the English fron- 
" tiers, and committed the most savage cruelties."* 

New England, with her usual spirit, pressed an immediate 
descent upon Acadia at least, with the military means which 
had been collected at such heavy cost ; but the captains of the 
British men of war on that station, could not be prevailed upon 
even to serve as convoy to the transports. To defray their 
quota of the expenses of this fruitless armament, the colonies 
of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, issued for the 
first time, those ill-omened symbols — ^bills of credit. 

In less than a twelvemonth. New England, engaged — upon 
further promises of co-operation from the mother country, 
which were not fulfilled — in an expedition against Port Royal; 
and with several regiments of her own, supported by a few 
English frigates, forced that place to surrender. In the year 

* History of New York, Part iv. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



1 



1710, the governments of New England, New York, the Jer- SEC'( 
seys, and Pennsylvania, suddenly received orders from the ^^^i^ 
British sovereign, to hold in readiness their contingents of 
men for an enterprise against Canada, in which a powerful 
fleet, to be expected in a few days after on the American 
coast, was to take the lead. The fleet arrived in little more 
than a fortnight, bringing requisitions for troops and provi- 
sions, which it seemed impossible to satisfy on so short a no- 
tice. A congress of the colonial governors assembled at New 
London, and took such measures as to raise and fully equip, a 
considerable force in a few weeks. Infinite distress arose out 
of so sudden and large a demand for money and provisions ; 
and a suspicion prevailed, that the tory ministry of queen Anne 
designed, by this hurried proceeding, to defeat, themselves, 
the proposed end of the expedition, and to make New Eng- 
land responsible for the miscarriage. 

The expedition did, in fact, fail most miserably, by the 
stranding of the British vessels in the river St. Lawrence ; 
and the whole blame was cast upon the colonies, as they had 
foreboded. The English admiral attributed the loss of his 
ships to the advice of the New England pilots, and the French 
historian, Charlevoix, an impartial arbiter in this case, charges 
it upon " the distrust and obstinacy of the English admiraL" 
The pilots made oath that they gave no such advice as was 
imputed to them, and that their opinion was neither followed 
nor regarded, the English officers having " a mean idea of 
their capacity." The general assembly of Massachusetts chal- 
lenged a formal inquiry inlo the affair, and sent three of the 
pilots to England to be interrogated, who waited many months; 
Ijut no questions were asked, nor elucidations sought by the 
British court.* 

At the same time not the least credit was openly given to 
the colonies for their prodigious exertions and severe losses. 
" What," says one of the historians, " would be thought ex- 
traordinary in any state of Europe, one -fifth part of the whole 
inhabitants of Massachusetts, capable of bearing arms, were 
in pay that summer, not vagrants, swept, as in England, from 
the streets and brothels, but heads of families, artificers, and 
robust young men, whose labour was inestimable to new set- 
tlements." We have, on the subject of this oppressive business, 
the testimony of Dummer to this effect.f " Notwithstanding 
some people found it necessary to blame New England, the 
better to excuse themselves, yet it has been acknowledged to 

* Hutchinson, vo .ii. p. 175, f Defence of the Charters. 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

T I. me by English gentlemen who were then on the spot, and well 
■^^ experienced in these affairs, that such a fleet and army, want- 
ing the necessaries they did, could not have been despatched 
in so short a warning from any port of England. It is really 
astonishing, to consider, that these little governments of New 
England should be able, by their own strength, to perform 
such great things in the military way." 

These little governments were not, moreover, prodigal of 
men and money, merely in the struggles at their door, or for 
their own seeming interests. When, in 1703, Jamaica, under 
the apprehension of an invasion, solicited help from Massa- 
chusetts, that province sent to the island, several companies of 
foot, of which but few individuals ever returned to their native 
country. When, in the year 1705, Nevis was sacked by Ib- 
berville. New England spontaneously contributed a large sum 
of money, together with building materials, &c. for the relief 
of the sufferers, and never claimed nor received retribution. 
The British court not only left to the northern colonies, the 
care and expense of their own defence against the French and 
Indians, and of the protection and advancement of the gene- 
ral interests of the empire in North Ainerica, but drew upon 
their resources for the execution of its plans of aggrandize- 
ment in the West Indies. In 1741, three thousand six hun- 
dred men were assessed and levied upon them, in aid of the 
expedition of that year against the Island of Cuba ; and they 
were at the whole charge of bounty, provisions and trans- 
ports for their respective quotas. Massachusetts contributed 
live hundred men, of whom the equipment and transportation 
cost her ^7000. It is calculated by Hutchinson, that, from 
the year 1675, to 1713 the epoch of the treaty of Utrecht, five 
or six thousand of the youth of Massachusetts and New Hamp- 
shire — the provinces most exposed — perished either by the 
hand of the enemy, or by distempers contracted in the mili- 
tary service. This judicious author is of opinion, that the 
people of New England bore, during the same interval, " such 
an annual burden, as was not felt by any other subjects of 
Great Britain."* 

3. While the northern colonies were putting forth these ex- 
traordinary energies, and undergoing so severe a probation, the 
middle and southern prosecuted their arduous defence, against 
enemies of an equally fierce and restless spirit ; and were ex-' 
posed to an additional scourge, which could be also traced, in 

♦ Vol. ii. ri. ofM. p. 183. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

part to the cupidity of the mother country. The conspiracy of SEC 
the Indian tribes of North Carolina, in 1712, for the extermi- *-*" 
nation of the whites, is marked by the massacre of one hun- 
dred and thirty-seven setders about Roanoke alone. The 
valour and conduct of the militia of the two Carolinas, gave, 
on this occasion, a final blow to the power of the Tuscaroras, 
one of the most considerable Indian nations of that quarter. 
Only three years from this signal exploit, South Carolina was 
the theatre of a similar conspiracy, and had to wrestle, near 
her capital, with a still more formidable tribe, the Yamassees. 
With no more than twelve hundred men on the muster roll, 
fit to bear arms, she expelled the multitude of these ferocious 
barbarians from her soil, having vanquished them in a gene- 
ral battle of a most obstinate and sanguinary character. Four 
hundred of her white inhabitants fell in the war. There is an 
incident in its train, which I shall not do amiss to mention. 
" The Assembly of Carolina," says an English historian,* 
*' passed two acts, to appropriate the lands, gained by con- 
quest from the Yamassees, for the use of such British sub- 
jects as should come over and settle upon them. On this 
encouragement, five hundred men from Ireland transported 
themselves to Carolina; but not long after, in breach of the 
provincial faith, and to the entire ruin of the Irish emigrants, 
the proprietors ordered the Indian lands to be surveyed for 
their own use, and run out into large baronies. The old settlers 
thus losing the protection of the new comers, deserted their 
plantations, and again left the frontiers open to the enemy. 
Many of the unfortunate Irish emigrants, reduced to misery, 
perished, and the remainder removed to the northern colonies." 
The number of warriors of the four principal Indian na- 
tions — the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and Chickasaws — 
in the neighbourhood of Georgia and Carolina, are com- 
puted to have been, as late as in 1733, upwards of four- 
teen thousand, not less redoubtable by their numerical supe- 
riority, than their daring and martial spirit. The campaigns 
which were made against them at subsequent periods, exhi- 
bit for their duration — like the Indian wars of the northern 
and middle provinces — danger as appalling, and suflfering as 
intense, encountered with as much resolution, and sustained 
with as much fortitude, — as many obstacles overcome with as 
much perseverance, — as are commemorated in the military 
annals of any people. 

* Hewatt's Historical Account of South Carolina and Georgia, London p. 
Vol. I.-~0 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

r I. Carolina had, at the same time, not only to shake off a« 
"^^ oppressive government, and extirpate a host of savages, but to 
protect herself from a body of negro slaves, greatly outnum- 
bering their masters, and ripe for revolt and carnage. She 
detected, in 1730, a domestic plot, which looked to the mas- 
sacre of all the whites, and in 1738, found herself engaged in 
a servile war, which was brought to a speedy issue indeed, but 
not without great slaughter. The negroes were excited, on 
this occasion, by the Spaniards, who held out to them the pros- 
pect of liberty, and received the runaways into the military 
service of Spain, — the precise model of the conduct of Great 
Britain towards the same colony, during our revolutionary war. 
Besides the mutual invasions between the Spaniards of Flo- 
rida and the Carolinians, which I have already mentioned, 
others of a later date might be cited, in which the blood and 
treasure of the latter were profusely expended. Georgia was 
planted in 1733. Already in 1740, this last born among the 
colonies, sent forth an armament against St. Augustine, and 
two years after, repelled an invasion of the Spaniards, who- 
made their attack with a force of thirty-two sail, and three 
or four thousand picked men. 

From the establishment of the French on the Ohio, in the 
middle of the eighteenth century, Virginia, Mar3dand, and 
Pennsylvania were cruelly infested with Indian hostilities, and 
their sufferings may be regarded as due to the corruption or 
sluggishness of the British rulers. The plan early formed by 
France, of uniting her colonies of Canada and Louisiana, by 
a chain of forts from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, did 
not escape the sagacity, as it was well fitted to rouse the fears, 
of the colonists. They long laboured in vain to obtain the 
co-operation of the British court, in anticipating the French 
plan, and to open the eyes of the British statesmen to the 
dangers of its execution.* We have seen in the extracts 
which I have made from the reports of the Board of Trade 
and Plantations, the motive which was indulged in England, 
for discouraging anglo- American settlements beyond the moun- 
tains. The authors of the Universal History acknowledge 

* Even before the close of the seventeenth century, the British govern- 
ment had been admonished of this evil by Dr. Davenant, in the following' 
passage of his Discourse on the Protection and Care of Trade : " Should the 
French settle at the disembogueing of the river Meschasipe, in the Gulph 
of Mexico, they would not be long before they made themselves mastei's of 
that i-ich province, which would be an addition to their strength very tem- 
ble to Euorpe. But this would more particularly concern England; for, by 
4,he opportunity of that settlement, % erecting forts along the several lakes be- 
t-ween that river and Canada, they may intercept all the trade of our north- 
ern plantations." 



OP THE COLONISTS. 

it as " certain that from the treaty of Utrecht, to the middle SEC 
of the century, the government of England was lulled into a n^ 
most fatal security, whilst that of France was making wide 
strides towards a total acquisition of North America, by cut- 
ting off the English colonies from the back country." The 
same writers teach us, however, in a passage which I am about 
to quote, that it was to something more than supineness in the 
British councils, that New York particularly, owed some of 
her worst distresses. 

" Spotswood, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, about 
the year 1716, a man of sense and spirit, finding the Outaouais, 
now called the Twightees, extremely well affectioned towards 
the English^ proposed to purchase some of their lands upon 
the river Ohio, and erect a company for opening a trade to 
the southward, westward, and northward of the river with the 
savages. This was at once a rational and practicable scheme, 
but the execution of it depended entirely upon the favoui-able 
dispositions of the natives for the English, which might have 
been secured, by the punctual payment of the purchase mo- 
ney or effects. This noble project clashed with the views of 
the French, who had by this time, formed their great schemes 
upon the Mississippi, and the ministry of king George I, as 
we have already hinted, having reasons for keeping zvell with 
that court^ the project was not only dropped, but the French 
were encouraged to build the fort of Croxvn Pointy upon the 
territory of Neiv Tork.''''^ 

4. For Europe, the achievements of which I have spoken, 
however noble, and in themselves worthy of renown, were, in 
a great degree, obscure and insignificant; and England might 
even yet cheat herself into the belief, that the Provincials 
were as humble in their military, as she represented them 
to be in their political and literary capacities. But, an event 
happened in 1746, after which, this delusion could not conti- 
nue, without taking the character of infatuation ; nor the conti- 
nent of Europe fail to be struck, with the singular prowess of 
the transatlantic people, and to feel the decisive weight which, 
although of a new creation as it were, they already threw into 
the scale of Great Britain. It will be at once under- 



* " Spotswood," says Bui'k, in his History of Virginia, vol. iii. ch. ii, 
" gave offence to thje British ministry, by urging with too much boldness, 
the necessity of establishing ii chain of forts for the protection of the coun- 
try between the Apalachian mountains and the Mississippi." This able go- 
vernor was dismissed, for urging at the same time, the propriety of a claim 
for compensation, which was preferred by some of the provincials, who had 
accompanied him on an exploring party beyond the mountains. 



MILITARY EFFORTS'" 

stood, that I allude to the capture of the celebrated fortress of 
Louisbourg, next to Quebec, the strong hold of the French in 
the Avestern hemisphere — the key to Nova Scotia — the spring 
of every evil to the British fisheries and trade, — and from 
the influence of its position, and the extent and immense 
expense of its works, which were thought impregnable, com- 
monly styled the Dunkirk of America. At a moment when 
France was without a fear for its safety, and England had 
not even raised her hopes to its conquest, the project of re- 
ducing it was conceived in Massachusetts, and adopted, with 
correspondent boldness, by the other provinces of New Eng- 
land. A body of near five thousand men was immediately 
raised, and a fleet equipped for the purpose, — all without the 
concurrence, or even countenance, of the mother country: 
An expedition, composed of the greater part of the naval 
means of the projectors, and of a body of freeholders, thriving 
artificers, and sons of wealthy farmers, led by a New England 
merchant, had actually been despatched, before any British 
vessels arrived to join in the attempt. I need not repeat the 
details of its wonderful success, so well known to every reader 
of modem history; but I ought to state the opinions pronounced 
by some of the English annalists, concerning the general con-- 
duct of the Provincials on the occasion, and the importance of 
the exploit. The design pleads for itself too strongly to re- 
quire certificates, and the merit of it was never claimed by 
Great Britain. 

" The New England troops," says an English authority re- 
ceived as the highest, at the time,* " within the compass of 
twenty-three days from the time of their first landing, erected 
five fascine batteries against the town, mounted with cannon of 
forty-two, twenty-two, and eighteen pounds shot, mortars of 
thirteen, eleven, and nine inches diameter, with some cohoitis ; 
all which were transported by land, Avith incredible labour 
and difficulty ; most of them above two miles : all the ground 
over which they were drawn, except small patches or hills of 
rocks, was a deep mcrass, in which, while the cannon were 
upon wheels, they several times sunk so deep, as not only to 
bury the ca,rriages, but their whole bodies. Horses and oxen 
could not be employed in this service, but all must be drawn 
by men, up to the knees in mud ; the nights in which the work 
was done, were cold and foggy, their tents bad, there being 
no proper materials for tents to be had in New England at the 
outset of the expedition. But notwithstanding these difficul- 

* Memoirs of the Last War in America- 



OF THE COLONISTS. ] 

ties, and many of the men being taken down with fluxes, so SECT 
that at one time there were fifteen hundred incapable of duty, 
they went on without being discouraged or murmuring, and 
transported the cannon over those ways, which the French had 
always thought impassable for such heavy weights; and besides 
this, they had all their provisions and heavy ammunition, 
which they daily made uSe of, to bring from the camp over 
the same way upon their backs." 

" The people of New England," says Tindal, the conti- 
nuator of Rapin,* " behaved on this occasion with great spi- 
rit. Three thousand eight hundred and fifty volunteers, all 
of them well affected to the expedition, assembled and em- 
barked at Boston. Though neither the militia nor their com- 
manders had ever seen any military service, they proceeded 
"with all the regularity and intrepidity of veterans. The grand 
approaches to the body of the place were to be carried on from 
the southern side. Here the service was extremely laborious; 
the guns for mounting the batteries being dragged through 
bogs and incumbered places by the landsmen, for above two 
miles. They succeeded, however, to admiration, and by as- 
sistance of the officers and engineers of the marines, and some 
lent them by the commodore^ they mounted a large train of ar- 
tillery on an eminence called the Green Hill, about three quar- 
ters of a mile from the place. The garrison having made a 
resolute defence, and a general assault being expected, surren- 
dered on the 13th of June." 

" It is sufficient to state," observe the authors of the Uni- 
versal History, " that, the colony of New England gave peace 
to Europe^ by raising, arming, and transporting, four thou- 
sand men, who took Louisbourg, -which proved an equivalent^ 
at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle^ for all the successes of the 
French upon the continent of Europe. In the late war with 
France, which was concluded in the year 1762, they exerted 
the same glorious spirit against the common enemy, and 
greatly contributed to that extension of territory in North 
America," &c. 

The following is the testimony of Smollet,f accompanied 
by some remarks which I am not sorry to produce at the same 
time. " The most important achievement of the war of 1 744, 
was the conquest of Louisbourg. The natives of New Eng- 
land acquired great glory for the success of this enterprise. 
Britain, which had in some instances, behaved like a step- 
mother to her colonies, was now convinced of their impor- 

* Vol. xxi. p. 157. t Continuation of Hume. 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

r I. tance, and treated those as brethren whom she had too long con- 
sidered as aliens and rivals. Circumstanced as the nation is, 
the legislature cannot too tenderly cherish the interests of the 
British plantations in America. They are inhabited by a brave, 
hardy, industrious people, animated with an active spirit of 
commerce, and inspired with a noble zeal for liberty and inde- 
pendence." This historian, in the same breath in which these 
fine sentiments are uttered, does not hesitate to assert, that 
" the reduction of Louisbourg was chiefly owing to the vigi- 
lance and activity of Mr, Warren, a British commodore, and 
that the operations of the siege, were wholly conducted, by the 
engineers and officers who commanded the British marines !" 
No effort, in fact, was spared in England, to perpetuate the 
affair under this aspect. The agent deputed by the govern- 
ment of Massachusetts to solicit reimbursement for the ex- 
penses of the expedition, wrote thus from London to the secre- 
tary of the general court of that province : " Upon my arrival 
in England, the first newspaper I met with on the road con- 
tained an address to his majesty, from a seaport which trades 
to Boston; wherein they congratulated his majesty on the 
success of his navy, in taking Cape Breton, without making the 
least mention of the land forces employed on that occasion. 
When I came to London, I there found the effects of the arts 
used to have the conquest deemed a naval acquisition, as it 
was afterwards in the most public manner, declared to be by a 
noble lord then in the ministry. I determined to attempt to 
establish the credit of the New England forces, and for that 
end drew up a petition to the secretary of state, praying that 
the account of their behaviour, taken on the spot by the gover- 
nor, and transmitted to the secretary of state, might be pub- 
lished by authority; — after several months solicitation^ this was 
promised me ; but I soon afterwards received such treatment 
as was in effect openly declaring, that it was determined not to 
comply with that promise; — before I could prevail, I was 
forced into a sharper contest than I should ever choose to be 
again concerned in."* 

Nay, Mr. Warren himself deposed on oath, in the High 
Court of Admiralty, seventeen months after the event, " that, 
with the assistance of his majesty's ships, &c. he, the depo- 
nent, did subdue the whole island of Cape Breton :"f — And 
we shall, by and by, find, upon the testimony of one of the 



* Letter of Mr. Bollan, of April 23, 1752, preserved in the first volume 
of the Collections of the Mass. His. Society, 
t Registry of the High Court of Admiralty of England, Sept. 29, 1747. 



OF THE COLONISTS. ] 

ministry, that at the British court, he, the same deponent, SECT, i 
. represented the Provincials, as having displayed on the occa- 
sion, arrant and ludicrous cowardice ! To make the true spirit 
and value of these allegations better understood, I am tempted 
to transcribe a few passages from Hutchinson, whose impar- 
I tiality, as far as New England is concerned, will hardly be 
j questioned, and who wrote from personal knowledge. 

" The 23 d March, 1745, an express-boat, sent to commo- 
! dore Warren, in the West Indies, to request his co-operation 
j in the attempt upon Louisbourg, returned to Boston. As this 
! was a Provincial expedition, without orders from England, 
: and as his small squadron had been weakened by the loss of 
I the Weymouth, Mr. Warren excused himself from any con- 
j cem in the affair. This answer necessarily struck a damp 
into the governor, and the other persons who were made 
acquainted with it before the Provincial fleet sailed. On the 
23d April, however, the commodore arrived. It seems that 
j in two or three days after the express sailed from the West 
I Indies for Boston, the Hind sloop brought orders to Mr. War- 
ren to repair to Boston, with what ships could be spared, and 
to concert measures with Mr. Shirely for his majesty's general 
service in North America. Whether the land or sea force 
; had the greatest share in the acquisition may be judged from 
the relation of facts. The army, with infinite labour and 
fatigue to themselves, harassed and distressed the enemy, and 
with perseverance a few weeks or days longer, must have 
compelled a surrender. It is very doubtful whether the ships 
could have lain long enough before the walls to have carried 
the place by storm, or whether, notwithstanding the appear- 
ance of a design to do it, they would have thought it advisable 
to attempt it; it is certain they prevented the arrival of the 
Vigilant, took away all hopes of further supply and succour, 
and it is very probable the fears of a storm might accelerate 
the capitulation." 

" The commodore was willing to carry away a full share of 
the glory of this action. It was made a question whether the 
keys of the town should be delivered to him or to the general, 
and whether the sea or land forces should first enter. The 
officers of the army say they prevailed." 

" As it was a time of year to expect French vessels from 
all parts to Louisbourg, the French flag was kept flying, to 
decoy them in. Two East India, and one South Sea ship, 
supposed to be altogether of the value of ^600,000 sterling, 
were taken by the squadron at the mouth of the harbour, into 
which they would undoubtedly have entered." 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

IT I. " With great colour the army might have claimed a share 
with the men-of-war in these rich prizes. Some of the officers 
expected a claim would have been laid in, but means were 
found to divert it^ nor was any part decreed to the vessels of 
war in the Province service^ except a small sum to the brig 
Boston Packet, Captain Fletcher, who being chased by the 
South Sea ship, led her directly under the command of the 
guns of one of the men-of-war."* 

I would add to these facts, that reimbursement was obtain- 
ed fi'om Parliament after seven years of urgent solicitation. 
The picture of sordidness and chicane, which is presented by 
the Massachusetts agent, in his account of the cavils and delays 
interposed to defeat his errand, is as curious as it is disgusting, 
when referred to the administration of so great an empire. 
*' The government of Massachusetts," says the author whom 
I have last quoted, " was still, in 1747, soliciting for the re- 
imbursement of the charge in taking Cape Breton, and by the 
address, assiduity, and fidelity of William Bollan, esquire, who 
was one of the agents of the province for that purpose, there 
was a hopeful prospect that the full sum, about ^180,000 ster- 
ling, would be obtained." 

*' Some of the ministry thought it suff.cient to grant such sum 
as rvould redeem the bills issued for the expedition, &c. at 
their depreciated value, and Mr. Kilby, the other agent, 
seemed to despair of obtaining more; but Mr. Bollan, who 
had an intimate knowledge of our public affairs, set the injustice 
of this proposal in a clear light, and made it evident, that the 
depreciation of the bills was as effectually a charge borne by 
the people, as if the same proportion of bills had been drawn in 
by taxes, and refused all proposals of accommodating, insisting 
upon the full value of the bills when issued."! 

This haggling with the colonial agents, where so signal a 
service was in question, — one which purchased an indispensa- 
ble peace for Great Britain — betrays a spirit which none can 
be at a loss to understand, especially when it is recollected, 
what immense sums were lavished by her in support of 
the continental nations. " If a continent must be supplied," 
was the language of the addresses to the king, from some parts 
of England, " if our spoils must be shared, let America 
partake, rather than ungrateful Germany, the sepulchre of 
British interest." America did not, however, partake, as we 
have seen, until a much later period, and then partook in a 
very different degree and form. She received scarcely a 

* Vol. ii. chap. iv. t Ibid. 



OF THE COLONISTS. |fl| 

if 

soldier for her defence, and had her pittance of retribution SECTp* 
doled out to her with huckstering parsimony ; while Hanover v-^-v-''* 
was defended with a profusion of blood and treasure, which, 
as the historians truly remark, astonished all Europe. The 
immense subsidy even preceded the effort of the fickle ally in 
Germany : — The slender reimbursement followed haltingly, 
the invaluable service of the loyal subject in America. France 
stood forth herself, and undertook the whole defence of her 
American possessions : Great Britain left the part of principals 
to hers, acting merely as their occasional, and always reluc- 
tant auxiliary. 

- By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, of 1748, the conquest so 
hardly earned, and so dearly prized by the provincials, was 
surrendered to France, as an equivalent — the only one which 
Great Britain had to offer, — for the towns in Flanders taken 
by the French from her German ally.* And the achievement 
of the colonies proved not merely sterile for their interests, as 
it was rendered by this issue, but the cause of a vital danger, 
and fearful anxiety during many weeks ; for, the French court, 
roused by the loss of Louisbourg, directed against their coast, 
the most powerful armament which had ever been sent into 
the North American seas ; and which, only an unparalleled 
train of disastrous casualties, prevented from committing ex- 
tensive mischief. The activity and resolution of New Eng- 
land, in preparing the means of defence, on this occasion, cor- 
responded with her previous career. 

Immediately before this invasion was announced, eight 
thousand two hundred men had been voted by the colonies, 
and the greater part of them raised, at the requisition of the 
British ministry, for a general invasion of Canada, which the 
same ministry abandoned the following year, leaving the co- 
lonies to defray the expense of the levy. This abortive scheme, 
and the Louisbourg expedition, involved them in the greatest 
financial embarrassments. 

5. It was not denied in England, that the reduction of Louis- 
bourg preserved Nova Scotia, and enabled the mother coun- 
try to make the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle : nor could it fail to 
• be perceived from the affair, how materially the colonies might 
Contribute to give her a final ascendancy over her great rival.. 
Acknowledgments and praise were not, therefore, altoge- 
ther withheld ; but they were so bestowed, as to betray an 
-exasperation of those feelings, of which I have particularly 



* See note G. 
Vol. I.-r-P 



h MILITARY EFFORTS 

RT I. treated in my first section. Scarcely two years elapsed, before 
"•'"^-^ the bill already mentioned, for enforcing all the king's instruc- 
tions in the colonies, was brought into Parliament ; and, at the 
distance of two years more, the new plan for " increasing their 
dependence" began to bear fruit, in the prohibition of iron and 
steel manufactories. Among the jealous and unnatural returns 
for their military efforts in the war of 1744, I may enumerate 
the clause inserted by Parliament, (1754,) in the mutiny bill, 
subjecting all officers and soldiers raised in America, by the 
authority of the respective governors or governments, to the 
same rules and articles of war, and the same penalties and pu- 
nishmf^nts, as those to which the British forces were liable. 
A generous opposition was, indeed, made to this measure in 
the House of Commons. Some of the objections which were 
uttered in the debate on the occasion, are worthy, in an histo- 
rical point of view, of being brought to the notice of my rea- 
ders. I transcribe from the Reports, those of Mr. Robert 
Viner, and of Mr. Henry Fox, the minister of the day. 

" Mr. Robert Viner said — Our regiments, so far, at least, 
as relates to the common soldiers, are usually composed of the 
verv lowest and most abandoned of our people ; but Avith re- 
spect to the troops now raised, or that may hereafter be raised 
in America, the case is very different : many of them may not, 
perhaps, be able to support themselves in the service of their 
country, without being paid by their country ; but many of 
them have engaged, and many of them will, I hope, engage, 
merely for the sake of serving their couTitry ; they have senti- 
ments of religion, they have sentiments of honour, and by 
such sentiments they may be kept under proper discipline, 
without such rigorous punishments as are to be inflicted by 
this bill, upon our British mercenary soldiers." 

" This, Sir, we may be convinced of, from the whole tenor 
of our American history. How many wars have our planta- 
tions from time to time been engaged in : wars more cruel, 
and more liable to ambuscade and surprises, than any we 
have in Europe, and consequently, such as have always re- 
quired a stricter discipline, if possible, than is necessary in 
this part of the world ; and yet if we look into their militia 
laws, we shall find, that they have but very few military crimes, 
and that most of their military punishments are only a ver)'^ 
moderate fine, or a very moderate corporal punishment, upon 
such as cannot pay their fine ; nay, I do not know that any of 
our plantations ever extended a military punishment to life or 
limb ; and yet they have hitherto carried on, and ended all 
their wars with glory and success. So powerful. Sir, are the 



OP THE COLONISTS. M 

,f/,,| 
motives of virtue, honour and gloiy, where proper care is SECT;",; 

taken to cultivate them in the breast of the soldier, or rather, ^-^^v^'" 

where care is not taken to eradicate all such principles, by the 

multitude and severity of military punishments." 

" Mr. Henry Fox said — I shall grant that their militia have 
generally behaved pretty well^ in all the wars they have been 
engaged in ; they have, indeed, on all occasions, shown un- 
daunted courage ; as Englishmen^ I hope, always will." 

The mutiny act proved so odious to the colonists, as seri- 
ously to obstruct the public service, and to render it necessary 
for some of the governors to give public assurances, that the 
militia, when called to march to the western frontiers, should 
not be subject to its provisions. It was not the only grievance 
of the description, and by the imposition of which the mother 
country sacrificed justice and policy, to pride, or routine. By 
an act of Parliament, the general, or field officers of the colo- 
nial troops, had no rank with the general and field officers 
who served by commission from the king ; and a captain or 
other inferior officer of the British forces, took precedence of 
the provincial officers of the like grade, though the commis- 
sions of the latter were of prior date. Many attempts had 
been made, at an early period, to put the militia at the dispo- 
sal of the royal governors, but always without success. The 
failure of one of these attempts in Connecticut, in 1693, was 
attended with circumstances which deserve to be cherished in 
our history. They are thus related by the historian Trumbull, 
in his homely though impressive way. 

" Colonel Benjamin Fletcher, governor of New York, had 
received a commission entirely inconsistent with the charter 
rights, and the safety of the colonies. He was vested with 
plenary powers of commanding the whole militia of Connec- 
ticut and the neighbouring provinces. He insisted on the 
command of the militia of Connecticut. As this was ex- 
pressly given to the colony charter, the legislature would not 
submit to his requisition." 

" The colony wished to serve his majesty's interest, and, as 
far as possible, consistently with their chartered rights, to 
maintain a good understanding with governor Fletcher. Wil- 
liam Pitkin, Esq. was, therefore, sent to New York, to treat 
and make terms with him respecting the militia, until his ma- 
jesty's pleasure should be further known. But no terms could 
be made with him short of an explicit submission of the mili- 
tia to his command." 

" On the 26th of October he came to Hartford, while the 
assembly were sitting, and^ in his majesty's name, demanded 



MILITARY EFf ORTS 

fiT I- their submission of the militia to his command, as they would 
'^^^■^ answer it to his majesty ; and that they would give him a 
speedy answer in one word, yes or no. He subscribed him- 
self his majesty's lieutenant, and commander in chief of the 
militia, and of all the forces by sea or land, and of all the 
forts and places of strength in the colony of Connecticut. He 
ordered the militia of Hartford under arms, that he might beat 
up for volunteers. It was judged expedient to call the train- 
bands in Hartford, together ; but the assembly insisted, that 
the command of the militia was expressly vested by charter in 
the^governor and company ; and that they could by no means, 
co'lisistently with their just rights, and the common safety, re- 
sign it into any other hands. They insinuated, that his de- 
mands were an invasion of their essential privileges, and sub- 
versive of their constitution." 

" Upon this, colonel Bayard, by his excellenc^^'s command, 
sent a letter into the assembly, declaring, that his excellency 
had no design upon the civil rights of the colony; but would 
leave them in all respects as he found them. In the name of 
his excellency, he tendered a commission to governor Treat, 
empowering him to command the militia of the colony. He 
declared, that his excellency insisted, that they .should ac- 
knowledge it an essential right, inherent in his majesty, to 
command the militia ; and that he was determined not to set 
his foot out of the colony, until he had seen his majesty's com- 
mission obeyed : that he would issue his proclamation, show- 
ing the means he had taken to give ease and satisfaction to his 
majesty's subjects of Connecticut, and that he would distin- 
guish the disloyal from the rest." 

" The assembly, nevertheless, would not give up the com- 
mand of the militia ; nor would governor Treat receive a com- 
mission from colonel Fletcher." 

" The trainbands of Hartford assembled, and, as the tradition 
is, while captain Wadsworth, the senior officer, was walking 
in front of the companies, and exercising the soldiers, colonel 
Fletcher ordered his commission and instructions to be read. 
Captain Wadsworth instantly commanded, " beat the drums," 
and there was such a roaring of them, that nothing else could 
be heard. Colonel Fletcher commanded silence. But no 
sooner had Bayard made an attempt to read again, than 
Wadsworth cried, " Drum, drum, I sav." The drummers 
understood their business, and instantly beat up with all 
the art and life of which they were masters. " Silence, , 
silence," said the colonel. No sooner was there a pause, 
than Wadsworth spoke with great earnestness, " Drum, , 



OF THE COLONISTS. M 

fill 
drum, I say;" and turning to his excellency, said, "If I SECT'"; 

am interrupted again, I will make the sun shine through ^-^'-v^''^ 
you in a moment." He spoke with so much energy in his 
voice, and meaning in his countenance, that no further at- 
tempts were made to read, or enlist men. Such numbers of 
people collected together, and their spirits appeared so high, 
that the governor and his suite judged it expedient, soon to 
leave the town and return to New York."* 

6. After the colonies had completely acquired the Atlantic 
territory, by purchase and conquest, without pecuniary or mili- 
tary aid from the government of the mother country, peace 
was the natural and fair fruit of their exertions ; and it must 
appear, abstractedly, a gross injustice and hardship, that they 
should be deprived of that inestimable blessing by the broils 
of Europe. The case assumes a complexion of greater 
wrong and oppression, when we reflect, that the wars in which 
they were implicated against their European neighbours, arose 
out of the culpable ignorance of the parent states, respecting 
American geography. The limits of Nova Scotia, and, in 
general, the boundaries of the French and English possessions 
in America, were, with a shameful indifference to the welfare 
of the colonists, left by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, unde- 
cided and indeterminable. Hence, even before it suited the 
convenience of the metropolitan countries to break, in Europe, 
through the mere truce consequent upon that treaty, their Ame- 
rican dependencies had begun to vindicate by the sword their 
irreconcilable pretensions to territory. 

The treaty produced no interruption in the encroachments 
of the French of Canada. They pursued unremittingly their 
designs upon Nova Scotia, and the western regions; and em- 
ployed force for their purpose, where force was requisite. 
They seized upon the disputed parts of Acadia ; fortified them- 
selves on the lakes and the line of the Ohio; concluded 
alliances with the Indian tribes of those regions; plundered 
and destroyed the trading establishments of the British, and 
made hostile incursions from their forts into the Virginia li- 
mits; while the Engish colonies, though full of alarms at their 
progress, and smarting under their blows, were restrained by 
their sense of subordination to the government of the mother 
country, from taking, at once, the measures of offence which 
the provocation justified, and their safety seemed to exact. 
" It cannot be dissembled," say the authors of the Modern 

* Book i. chap xvi. 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

T I. History, ^^ that the state of parties in England at this time was 

'"'^^ unfavoui-able to any vigorous steps against the French. The 

English Americans had not yet, in 1753, ventured to attack 

the French themselves, a?id this forbearance laid them under 

inexpressible advantages.^''* 

Thus were the colonists prevented, by mal-administration 
in Great Britain, from averting the heavy evils, they after- 
wards suffered from the strong footing which the French, more 
wisely and honestly directed, were 'enabled to secure on the 
Ohio. The American governors, and particularly Mr. Din- 
widdle, lieutenant governor of Virginia, tried, by " many spi- 
rited speeches, messages, and despatches,"! to rouse the British 
ministiy to a sense of its duty and of the national interest ; 
until, finding their representations likely to remain unpro- 
ductive, they could hesitate no longer about exerting their 
own strength to dislodge the enemy. Dinwiddle sent first, in 
1 753^ a messenger, — otie major Washington^ as the Universal 
History styles him,— -to summon the French to evacuate their 
posts on the Ohio; and upon receiving a haughty refusal, raised 
and despatched a regiment under the command of this now 
transcendent name, to establish the British rights in that quar- 
ter. The expedition was unfortunate, and no better success, 
for the moment, attended the similar movements of the north- 
ern colonies. 

It was, however, recommended from England, that, " the 
British settlements should unite in some scheme of common de- 
fence, in the general and open war which was seen to be ine- 
vitable." The arrangement proposed to them by the mother 
country, at that critical moment, when a spirit of generosity 
would have dictated a particular tenderness for their liberties, 
involved the sacrifice of their main political privilege — exemp- 
tion from taxation by parliament. I need not relate how this 
was resisted; nor dwell again upon the well known Albany plan 
of union; but there is one circumstance in its history which 
ought not to be pretermitted. The leaders of the Provincial as- 
semblies were earnestly of opinion, and declared without re- 
serve, that, if it were adopted, they could undertake to de- 
fend themselves from the French^ -without any assistance from 
Great Britain. They required but to be left to raise and em- 
ploy their own supplies, in their own way, under the auspices 
of a governor appointed by the crown, to effect their perma- 
nent security, and even predominance on this continent. 



Vol xl. p. 196. t l^M 



OP THE COLONISTS. I 

r. In 1755, Massachusetts levied, in the space of two SECT 
months, at the instigation and expense of the crown, a body '-~^~^ 
of three thousand men, and by this force, joined with a few 
hundred regulars from Britain, the French were completely 
expelled from Nova Scotia. The British ministry determined 
about the same time on a decisive effort, by sending over troops 
for the destruction of all the French posts, which had been es- 
tablished within the immense tract to which the British crown 
laid claim in America. They committed the enterprise to ge- 
neral Braddock, of fatal memory, who landed in Virginia early 
in that year, with two regiments of British regulars; and in 
the beginning of the summer, set out, reinforced by a body of 
Virginia militia and friendly Indians, on his noted expedition 
against Fort Du Quesne. This officer had too just a sense oi 
the superiority of the European race of men and soldiers, not 
to despise the Provincials. Accordingly, he " neglected, diso- 
bliged, and threw aside the Virginians, and treated the Indians 
with the utmost contempt."* " He showed," says Entick,f 
'' such contempt towards the Provincial forces, because they 
" could not go through their exercise with the same dexterity and 
" regularity as a regiment of guards in Hyde-Park.'''^ " in con- 
" versation with general Braddock one day," says Franklin, 
" (in his Memoirs,) " he was giving me some account of his in- 
••' tended progress. ' After taking Fort Du Quesne,' said ho, ' I 
" am to proceed to Niagara, and having taken that, to Fronte- 
" nac, if the season will allow time, and I suppose it will; for 
" Du Quesne can hardly detain me above three or four days; 
" and then I see nothing thatxan obstruct my march to Niagara.' 
'■'■ Having before revolved in my mind the long line his army 
" must make in their march by a very nari'ow road, to be cut 
" for them through the woods and bushes ; and also what I had 
*■' heard of a former defeat of fifteen hundred French, who in- 
" vaded the Illinois country, I had conceived some doubts and 
" some fears for the event of tJ e campaign. He smiled at my 
" ignorance, and replied, ' These savages may indeed be a for- 
" midable enemy to your raxv American militia, but upon the 
" king'^s regular disciplined troops. Sir, it is impossible they 
" should make any impression.' ":|: 

The humble auxiliaries of Braddock pointed out the dan- 
gers to which he was exposed, remonstrated against the confi- 
dence of his march, and in so doing, heightened his magnani- 



* Universal History, vol. xl. p. 203. 
f Vol. i. p. 143. 
% See Note H. 



) MIUTARY EFFORTS 

BT I. mous disdain. The horrible catastrophe is still fresh, in vetse 
.-^''''^ and prose, at almost every fireside in the interior of our country. 
Six hundred of his regulars either killed or disabled, by an 
enemy not two-ihirds of their number, and partly armed with 
bows and arrows — himself mortally wounded — the middle 
colonies laid bare to the tomahawk and scalping knife — their 
frontiers devastated and drenched in blood — consternation 
spread throughout British America: — such were the conse- 
quences of the national and personal pride of the British ge- 
neral. The moral of the affair is made doubly striking by the 
following accurate relation of the English Universal History : 
" It is remarkable, that the Virginians and other Provincial 
troops who were in this action, and whom Braddock, by way 
of contempt, had placed in the rear, far from being affected 
with the panic which disordered the regulars, offered to ad- 
vance against the enemy, till the others could form and bring 
up the artillery ; but the regulars could not be brought again 
to the charge, where, as they said, they were butchered without 
seeing the enemy. Notwithstanding this, the Provincials ac- 
tually formed, and behaved so well, that they brought off the 
remaining regulars ; and the retreat of the whole was so unin- 
termitting, that the fugitives never stopped, till they met the 
rear division, which was advancing under colonel Dunbar."* 

I may add, from the Memoirs of Franklin, who wrote as an 
eye witness, a passage which throws additional light on the he- 
roic character of the " king's regular disciplined troops." " In 
their first march, from the landing till they got bejond the 
settlements, they had plundered and stripped the inhabitants, 
totally ruining some poor families, besides insulting, abusing, 
and confining the people if they remonstrated. This was 
enough to put us out of conceit of such defenders, if xve liacl 
really -wanted any .'''^ 

It was the lot of a provincial commander, with provincial 
troops, to restore, in a few weeks after the discomfiture of 
Braddock, the honour of the British name, and the tone of 
the public mind. The plan of operations for the campaign 
of 1755, arranged in Virginia, by a congress of governors, 
embraced an attempt on the French fort at Niagara, to be 
made by the American regulars and Indians ; and an expedi- 
tion against Crown- Point, to consist of militia from the north- 
ern colonies. In the course of the summer, an American 
force of six thousand men was collected for these purposes at 
Albany, the appointed rendezvous, and the command of the 

* Volxl. p. 204. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 

main body devolved upon colonel William Johnson, a mem- 
ber of the council of New York. When on his march to Ti- 
conderoga, this officer learned that a large body of the enemy, 
composed principally of French regulars under an experienced 
commander. Baron Dieskau, had been despatched from Ca- 
nada, to intercept the design upon Crown Point. They met 
on the banks of Lake George, and Johnson gained a victory 
nearly as signal as the defeat on the Monongaheia. Eight 
hundred of the French, the flower of their troops, were killed 
in the action, and their distinguished leader fell, mortally 
wounded, into the hands of the anglo- Americans ; while the 
loss of the latter did not exceed one hundred and eighty men. 
Dieskau's plan in setting out from Canada with his invincible 
Europeans, was to desolate the northern frontier settlements, 
and ^vrap Albany in flames ; — and these were the evils which 
Johnson averted, besides regaining for the English, the es- 
teem and confidence of the Indians, whom Braddock's tra- 
gedy had alienated. According to the English historians, Dies- 
kau owed his misfortune to presumption, and an obstinate 
contempt for the British provincials. 

Although great expenses were incurred, and numerous 
forces raised by the colonies, to carry into effbct the whole 
plan of the campaign, little was accomplished, except the re- 
pulse of the French, on this occasion. In accounting for the 
unprofitableness of the preparations of the year, the Universal 
History represents it as evident, that certain private discon- 
tents lurked in the minds of the chief provincials. " What- 
ever they might pretend, they knew well that Braddock had a 
commission, to act as commander in chief of all the British 
troops on the continent of America, and that they were only 
to be subordinate to him."* The British government gave 
all the eclat to the aff"air of Lake George, of which it was sus- 
ceptible, with an eye to their interests in Europe ; and we find 
the parliament, in an address to the king, " thankfully ac- 
knowledging his majesty's Avisdom and goodness, in having 
generously extended encouragement to that great body of his 
majesty's brave and faithful subjects^ with which his Ameri- 
can provinces happily abounded, to exert their strength on 
this important occasion of the encroachments of the French in 
America, as their duty, interest, and common danger obliged, 
and strongly called upon them to do." 



* Vol. xl. p. 211. 

\^ol. I.— Q 



I MILITARY EFFORTS 

IT, I. 8. When open war was at length declared, in 1756, be- 
v-^ tween England and France, the British cabinet manifested the 
disposition, to exert the force of the empire, against the French 
power in North America ; — and " the English subjects," says 
the Universal History, " all over that continent, seeing their 
mother country was determined to support them in earnest, 
made extraordinary efforts to bring a formidable force to the 
field." It was, in fact, settled by a council of colonial gover- 
nors, that twenty-one thousand men should be raised for spe- 
cific expeditions, notwithstanding the great addition which 
the levies and disasters of the preceding year, had made to the 
fiscal difficulties of the colonies. Their evil genius suggested 
to the mother country the appointment to the command over 
their forces, and the twelve thousand British regulars desdned 
to the same service, of a man, in whose character the leading 
trait was indecision. The Earl of Loudon, to whom their 
fortunes were committed, had not only this defect, but almost 
every other kind of incapacity. Authority to act was want- 
ing, until his arrival ; or, at least, was affected to be thought 
so, by general Abercrombie, who commanded in the interval; 
and *' owing to the unsettled state of the British ministry,"* 
he came too late in the year for any enterprise of moment. It 
is the opinion of the military critics, that had he appeared 
sooner, and possessed the proper degree of energy, the whole 
plan of operations concerted at New York, which looked to 
the reduction of all the principal posts of the French, might 
have been effected. Thus another year was lost, at an enor- 
mous expense to Great Britain, and with infinite mischief and 
trouble to the colonies. 

Meanwhile, the French exerted their accustomed activit)', 
and gained the most important advantages. They took Fort 
Ontario, at Oswego, and made prisoners the garrison of sixteen 
hundred American regulars. — By this event they became 
masters of the great lakes ; the northern frontier was nearly 
laid open, and full scope afforded to the Indians to glut their 
vengeance on the English settlers. With common judgment 
and exertion, on the part of the British general Abercrombie, 
whom I have mentioned above as the commander in chief ad 
interim, Oswego might have been preserved. This assertion 
is fully established in a work which his immediate predeces- 
sor, governor Shirley, published in London in 1758, in de- 
fence of his own military administration in America.f It is, 

* Universal History. 

j- " The conduct of major general Shirley, late general and commander in 
chief of his majesty's forces in North America, briefly stated." 



OF THE COLONISTS. ^ Jik 

in the same volume, put beyond question, that the American SECTi;|jl|' 
garrison, composed of the author's regiment and that of Pep- 
perell, behaved with the utmost gallantry ; so far that when 
the works of the fort were no longer tenable, the officers had 
considerable difficulty in persuading the men to lay down their 
arms, and that, some of the latter, according to the testimony 
of eye witnesses, " suffered themselves to be knocked on the 
head by the enemy, rather than submit." " Yet," says gover- 
nor Shirley, " reports were propagated, and gained credit in 
England, that the American regiments, (the fiftieth and fifty- 
first,) consisted of transported convicts and Irish Ro7nan Ca- 
tholics^ who by their mutinous behaviour, had contributed to 
the loss of the place. Reports were likewise propagated 
greatly to the disadvantage of the officers of both regiments ; 
but their known characters, and the behaviour of several of 
them upon other occasions, in his majesty's service, as well as 
this, are sufficient to vindicate their honour." 

The principal of the expeditions planned for the year 1756 
by the provincial governments, was that against Crown Point, 
to consist of a body of ten thousand men, made up of contin- 
gents from the colonies north of the Carolinas. Seven thousand 
troops were actually collected for the purpose, and the com- 
mand of the expedition was assigned to major general Winslow 
of Massachusetts. The sufficiency of this force is asserted by 
Shirley as unquestionable, from the unanimous opinion of a 
council of war held at Albany, at which general Abercrombie 
assisted. Winslow was in full readiness, in good time, to 
proceed with his provincials, first against Ticonderoga ; and 
it had been settled, that the British regulars should move up 
to Forts Edward and William Henry, which the former occu- 
pied, and be there prepared to sustain or assist them, as the 
occasion might require. The march of Winslow was delayed 
by obstacles ascribable to the improvidence of Abercrombie ; 
and on the intelligence of the fall of Oswego, all offensive ope- 
rations in that quarter were countermanded by the Earl of 
Loudon. In the letter* which Winslow addressed to the Earl 
of Halifax in London, on the subject of this affair, we find the 
following passage. " I write that your lordship may be in- 
formed of the share the American troops under my command 
have had in this expedition j and although we did not attempt 
Crown Point, which was the thing principally aimed at by our 
constituents, yet we were the means of stopping the current 
of the French forces, after their success in carrying Oswego, 

* Preserved in the Collections of the Mass. His. Soc. vol. for 1799. 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

T I. and thereby the saving of Albany, and a great part of the go- 
vernment of New York, as well as the western parts of New 
England, which, by their joining their forces at Carilon, was 
doubtless their intent." 

The right of Massachusetts to compensation for the provi- 
sions with which she furnished the king's troops during these 
arrangements, was admitted by the British parliament ; but 
several years elapsed before any part of the sum liquidated 
was paid. Minot relates a transaction of the governor of Mas- 
sachusetts with the general court of that province, in relation 
to a levy of three thousand five hundred for the Crown Point 
expedition, which exemplifies strikingly, the impression enter- 
tained by the royal officers in America, of the scrupulosity of 
the fiscal conscience of the mother country, where the north- 
em colonies were concerned. " The governor agreed to 
the terms of the general court, and loaned the province thirty 
thousand pounds sterling, out of the king's money in his hands, 
taking for security such grant as might be made them for their 
extraordinary services by the king or parliament, and a farther 
collateral mortgage of a tax^ to be raised in the tzuo following 
years.''''^ 

Notwithstanding that the only brilliant achievements dur- 
ing the war, had been performed when the provincials singly 
opposed the enemy, or were seconded but in a very slight 
degree by the British regulars; and that the adventure of 
Braddock had baffled all the domestic arrangements for de- 
fence, it can occasion no surprise, that the British commander 
in chief, at the beginning of 1757, formally laid to the charge 
of the colonies, all the calamities of the preceding year. He 
established his own infallibility by doing no more, the suc- 
ceeding campaign, although the British force in America at 
his disposal had been augmented to twenty thousand men, and 
twenty ships of the line, than make a demonstration upon 
Louisbourg. He collected his troops at Halifax; waited there 
some time for advices ; then returned gallantly to New York 
and — dismissed the provincials. Montcalm, who succeeded ba- 
ron Dieskau in the command of the military means of Canada, 
taking advantage of the absence of the principal part of the Bri- 
tish army, besieged and reduced Fort William Henry, situated 
oil the southern coast of Lake George, so as to command that 
lake and the western line. The provincial army stationed forthe 
defence of this important post, made a noble resistance, and 
were admitted to an honourable capitulation by the French 
commander ; but his Indian allies, with circumstances which 

* History of Slassacbusetts, vol. i. c. xii. 



of THE COLONISTS. 1 

mark out the case as the pattern of the recent one of the S' CT.| 
river Raisin, — either butchered, or appropriated to themselves ^^^v, 
as prisoners, a considerable part of the brave garrison. Out 
of a New Hampshire corps of two hundred, eighty were miss- 
ing. It was not merely this horrible catastrophe, and the loss 
of ordnance, ammunition, provisions, and the shipping on Lake 
George, which the colonists had to lament : they saw the In- 
dians, whom they had been able to attach to their cause, shaken 
in their fidelity, and such of the tribes as had determined to keep 
aloof from the struggle, or had wavered in the choice of a side, 
converted into indefatigable assailants. Massachusetts felt, 
more than the enemy, the energy of the British commander in 
chief, in a controversy which arose between him and her gene- 
ral court, concerning the quartering and billeting of the British 
regulars upon the inhabitants. She resisted, with her ancient 
spirit, the extension of the act of parliament on that head, to 
America, and stood firm under menaces fitted only for the 
meridian of Hindostan. 

Our illustrious countrjonan, Franklin, had personal relations 
with the noble lord, who proved, during two years, so fatal a 
scourge to the colonies. He has left, in his Memoirs, the fol- 
lowing notice of him, for the edification of posterity. " I won- 
dered how such a man as Loudon came to be entrusted with 
so important a business as the command of a great army. 
Instead of defending the colonies with his great force, he left 
them totally exposed, while he paraded idly at Halifax; by 
which means Fort George was lost. Besides he deranged all 
our mercantile operations, and distressed our trade by a long 
embargo on the exportation of provisions, on pretence of keep- 
ing supplies from being obtained by the enemy, but in reality 
for the purpose of beating down their price in favour of the con- 
tractors, in whose profits it was said, (perhaps from suspicion 
only,) he had a share ; and when at length the embargo was 
taken off, he neglected to send notice of it to Charleston, where 
the Carolina fleet was detained near three months ; and whereby 
their bottoms were so much damaged by the worm, that a 
great part of them foundered on their passage home."* 

In 1758, the elder Pitt breathed a new soul into the British 
councils, and resuscitated in the colonies those native energies, 
which a long series of exhausting and disappointed efforts, had 
sensibly depressed. Under the influence of his magnanimous 
spirit, America may be said to have emerged, with the whole 
British empire, " from the gulf of despondency, and risen to 
the highest point of practical vigour." A contagious zeal 

* See Note I. 



I MILITARY EFFORTS 

IT I. gave the fullest effect to his call upon the colonial governors, for 
the largest bodies of men the number of the inhabitants would 
allow. Fifteen thousand troops were voted by the three pro- 
vinces of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire 
alone. In less than twenty-four hours, a private subscription of 
^20,000 sterling for encouraging enlistments, was filled up in 
Boston. " The expense," says Minot, " of the regiments 
raised for his majesty's service amounted to near one hundred 
and twenty thousand pounds sterling : besides this, the inha- 
bitants of the several towns in the province, by fines, or by 
voluntary contributions to procure men for the service, paid at 
least sixty thousand pounds sterling more; which was, in all 
respects, as burdensome as if it had been raised as a tax by the 
government. The defence of our own frontiers ; and the other 
ordinary chai-ges of government, amounted to, at least, thirty 
thousand pounds sterling. The province had, in one campaign, 
on foot, seven thousand troops. This was a greater levy for a 
single province, than the three kingdoms had made collectively 
in any one year since the revolution." 

Loudon was superseded, in the beginning of 1758, by ge- 
neral Abercrombie : but the colonies cannot be said to have 
gained much by the substitution. The new commander in 
chief wasted a part of their resources, and checked the mo- 
mentum of the mighty force which Pitt had arrayed on this 
continent against the French, by an ill-advised and ill-managed 
expedition against Crown Point. He took with him sixteen 
thousand men^ of whom nine thousand were Provincials, and 
urged them to a hopeless assault upon Ticonderoga, which cost 
the lives of more than sixteen hundred of his bravest European 
troops, and of four hundred provincials. " This attack," says 
the Universal History, " when no prospect of success could 
possibly present itself, was followed by a retreat as pusillani- 
mous, as the other was presumptuous. The general reimbark- 
ed the troops, and though not an incident had happened that 
might not have been easily foreseen, or rationally expected, he 
returned to his former camp at Lake George."* 

Anxious to repair in any way, the mischief and disgrace of 
this repulse, Abercrombie consented, at the solicitation of a 
native A7nerican officer, colonel Bradstreet, to detach him 
with three thousand men, against Fort Frontenac, on the 
north side of the Ohio. This body of troops, with the ex- 
ception of only one hundred and fifty-five regulars, was com- 
posed of Provincials; and after surmounting, as the historians 

* Vol. xl. p. 220. 



OF THE COLONISTS. ifl 

acknowledge, incredible difficulties and hardships, it gave an SECtPh'i 
earnest of victory to the British cause, by capturing the for- ^-^*v- C! 
tress, together with nine armed vessels, a vast quantity of am- 
munition, &c. and breaking up thus, the principal depot of sup- 
plies for the south western posts and the hostile Indians. 

Louisbourg constituted an object of primary importance in 
the great scheme for annihilating fhe French power in America, 
which engrossed the care and strained the vigour of Pitt.* 
The reduction of that fortress was one of the first operations 
of the campaign, and was accomplished with an overwhelming 
force indeed, but in a manner highly creditable to the courage 
of the victors, among whom the provincials bore a distinguish- 
ed part. It was not easy, even for the mother country to forget, 
or not to recall at the moment, what had been before achieved 
by New England on the same theatre. 

9. To dispossess the French of Fort Du Quesne, the bul- 
wark of their dominion over the western region, entered neces- 
sarily into the plan of the campaign. This object was effect- 
ed, not certainly through the judgment and skill of the British 
commander within whose province it fell, but by the magni- 
tude of the force employed, and the influence of extraneous 
events. f The Virginia militia composed a large part of the 
army, which general Forbes carried with him in this enter- 
prise, and were under the immediate direction of Washing- 
ton. They performed the chief labour, truly herculean, and 
infinitely more oppressive than would have been necessary, 
had the British leader condescended to avail himself, in the 
choice of a route, and of the season of action, of the experi- 
ence and topographical knowledge of the provincial colonel. 
Against the urgent, reiterated expostulations of the latter, and 



* Much of the merit of the scheme is due to Franklin, who constantly urged 
the conquest of Canada upon the British government. The following state- 
ment of his grandson has never been contradicted in England. " The more 
Franklin weighed the subject in his mind, the more was he satisfied, that the 
true interest of Great Britain lay in weakening her rival on the side of Ame- 
rica, rather than in Germany ; and these sentiments he imparted to some of 
his friends, by whom they were reported to William Pitt, afterwards Earl of 
Chatham ; who no sooner consulted him on the practicability of the conquest 
of Canada, than he was convinced by the force of his arguments, and deter- 
mined by the simple accuracy of his statements. The enterprise was imme- 
diately undertaken ; the command given to general Wolfe," &c. (Memoirs, 
p, 194.) 

f " The success of colonel Bradstreet, at Frontignac, in all probability, 
facilitated the expedition under Forbes," &c. — Russel's Modern Europe, let, 
xxxiii. 



MILITARY EFFORTS. 

when there was left scarcely time to tread the beaten track, 
universally confessed to be the best passage over the moun- 
tains, he selected a road, every inch of which was to be cut^ 
and which exacted the constant toil of fifteen hundred or two 
thousand men. Washington advanced in front, and opened 
the almost impervious forest and mountain to the main body of 
the army. On the approach to Fort Du Quesne, the British 
general, disregarding the caution of his faithfid pioneer, sent 
forward a select corps of eight hundred men to reconnoitre 
the adjacent country. The enemy overpowered this detach- 
ment, and had destroyed it, but for the bravery and self pos- 
session of a Virginia captain.* Out of a company of one 
hundred and sixty-six provincials, sixty-two fell on the spot; 
and of the whole detachment, the number of killed and wound- 
ed w as nearly three hundred. From the account of this ex- 
pedition, framed by Chief Justice Marshall,! upon the papers 
of Washington, and unquestionably authentic, it is to be in- 
ferred, that if the army of Forbes did not encounter even a 
worse fate than that of Braddock, it was not owing to any 
superior wisdom of management, or greater pliability, in the 
leader. 

" The army," says Marshall, " reached the camp at Loyal 
Hanna, through a road alleged to be indescribably bad, about 
the fifth of November, where, as had been predicted, a council 
of war determined, that it was unadvisable to proceed further 
this campaign. It would have been almost impossible to have 
wintered an army in that position. They must have retreated 
from the cold inhospitable wilderness into which they had 
penetrated, or have suffered immensely, perhaps have perished. 
Fortunately some prisoners were taken, who informed them of 
the extreme distress of the fort. Deriving no support from 
Canada, the garrison was weak; was in great want of pro- 
visions; and had been deserted by the Indians. These en- 
couraging circumstances changed the resolution which had 
been taken, and determined the general to prosecute the ex- 
pedition." Washington seems to have felt the utmost indig- 
nation and chagrin at the conduct of the enterprise, and ex- 
pressed himself with unusual warmth, in his first letters to the 
speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses. " We appear, 
in my opinion, to act under the guidance of an evil genius. 
We shall be stopped at the Laurel Hill this winter. Can ge- 
neral Forbes have orders for these proceedings ? Impossible, 

• See a full account of the service peiformed by this officer> captain Bul- 
let, in vol. iii. p. 3, of Burk's History of Virginia, 
f Life of Washington, vol. ii. ch, i. 



OF THE COLONISTS. |(|ill 

The conduct of our leaders is tempered with something I do SECl/nl^,j| 
not care to give a name to. Nothing but a miracle can bring "^^^I'M 
the campaign to a happy issue," &c. I 

When we consider what is the present face of the country 
between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, it is doubly interesting to 
contemplate the picture drawn of it by the English historians, 
in their commemoration of this affair. " In the beginning of 
July, 1758, Brigadier Forbes set out on his expedition from 
Philadelphia for Fort Du ^esne. He was to march through 
countries that never had been impressed by human footsteps, 
and he had difficulties to surmount, greater, perhaps, than 
those of Alexander, in his expedition to India ; by establishing 
magazines, forming and securing camps, procuring carriages, 
and encountering a thousand unforeseen obstacles in penetrating- 
through regions, that presented nothing but scalping parties of 
French and savages, mountains, woods, and morasses," &c.* 

It is sufficient to repeat the fact, that the colonies had on 
foot, in active co-operation with the British forces, in 1759, 
twenty-five thousand troops, — to establish their title to a large 
share of the glorious results of that year. The number of the 
provincials was considerable before Quebec, and still greater 
in Amherst's arduous expedition, by way of Ticonderoga, 
Crown Point, and Lake Champlain. That ablest of the Bri- 
tish commanders in America, bore, in the general orders 
which he issued, after the complete reduction of Canada, in 
1 760, the strongest testimony to " the indefatigable efforts of 
his majesty's faithful subjects in America, and the zeal and 
bravery of the officers and soldiers of the provincial troops." 

The troops of this description composed altogether the third 
grand division of the British force, with which general Pri- 
deaux, " assisted by the interest and abilities of the provincial 
leader, general William Johnson," marched to reduce Fort 
Niagara, a post of the utmost consequence in itself, andinre-^ 
lation to the success of the main enterprise of the campaign of 
1759. The manner in which this service was performed will 
sustain a comparison at least, with that of Abercrombie's at- 
tempt upon Ticonderoga. I will adopt the narrative of the 
Univei-sal History. 

" While Amherst was reducing Crown Point, and making 
himself master of Lake Champlain, Prideaux and Sir Wil- 
liam Johnson were proceeding against Fort Niagara. On 
the 20th of July, Prideaux, to the inexpressible grief of 
the army, was killed in the trenches, by the bursting of a 



• Vol. xl. p. 221, Universal Historv, 

Vol. I.— R 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

cannon. The command then fell upon Sir William Johnson, 
' xvlio rvas superseded by brigadier general Gage^ by the appoint- 
ment of Amherst. Before Gage could arrive at Niagara, John- 
son had performed wonders. He had carried his approaches 
within one hundred yards of the covert-way of the fort ; and 
the French were so apprehensive of losing that palladium of 
their interest in North America, that they exerted their ut- 
most to maintain it, by collecting seventeen hundred men from 
all the neighbouring posts, particularly from Detroit, Venan- 
go, and Presque Isle, under the command of Mons. D'Aubry. 
Had this reinforcement reached the fort, it must have been 
impregnable ; but Johnson made dispositions towards the left, 
on the road leading fi'om Niagara Falls to the fortress, for in- 
tercepting it." 

" About 8 o'clock, on the 24th of July, the enemy appeared, 
and the English Indians attempted in vain to have some talk .| 
with their countrymen, who served under the French. The 
battle began with a horrible war-whoop, which was now mat- 
ter of ridicule, rather than terror, to the English, uttered by 
the French Indians. The French, as usual, charged with 
vast impetuosity, but being received with equal firmness, and 
the English Indians on the flanks doing considerable execu- 
tion, all the French army were put to the rout, and for five 
miles the pursuit continued, in which seventeen officers, 
among whom were the first and second in command, were 
made prisoners. Next morning Sir William Johnson sent a 
trumpet to the French commandant, with a list of the seven- 
teen officers that had been taken, to convince him of the inuti- 
lity of further resistance. The commandant found all Sir 
William Johnson's intelligence to be perfectly true, and in a 
few hours a capitulation was signed, by which six hundred 
and seven men, of which the garrison consisted, were to 
march out with the honours of war, to be embarked on the 
lake, and carried to New York, but protected from the bar- 
barity of the Indians. The women and children were carried 
to Montreal, and the conqueror treated the sick and wounded 
in a manner so humane, as to prove himself worthy of victory. 
Thus, for a second time, this self-taught general obtained an 
entire triumph over the boasted discipline of the French arms. 
But that was his least praise. Though eleven hundred In- 
dians followed him to the field, he restrained them within re- 
gular bounds."* 

While affecting at home to consider the colonists as of little 
efficienc}' in the field, and even to deride their humblest pre- 

* Vol. xl. p. 23r. 



\ 



OF THE COLONISTS. i 

tensions to the military character,* the mother country inces- SECl, 
santly called upon their assemblies for more levies, with pro- '*"^^, 
testations of the indispensableness of their fullest co-opera- 
tion. They were required, in 1760, to raise and equip, if 
practicable, at least as large a body of men as they had sent 
forth the preceding year; and they cJbeyed with an alacrity 
equal to that which they had manifested, when it seemed ne- 
cessary for them to make extreme efforts, to avoid being 
overrun b}' the common enemy, let in through the incapacity 
of the British commanders. Massachusetts supplied besides, 
troops to guard Lotiisbourg, Halifax, and Lunenburg, and 
entirely garrisoned Annapolis, Fort Cumberland at Chignecto, 
and Fort Frederick at St. John's. It was not merely land 
forces that were furnished by New England. Her seamen 
served in such numbers on board the British ships of war, that 
her merchants were compelled to navigate their trading ves- 
sels with Indians and negroes.f More than four hundred 
privateers, as I have already had occasion to remark, issued, 
during the war, from the North American ports, ravaged the 
French West India islands, and distressed to the utmost the 
commerce of France in all parts of the world. 

During the years 1760 and 1761, the southern colonies were 
involved in hostilities with the Cherokee Indians. These, in- 
stigated by the French, made the most destructive inroads, 
and required some arduous campaigns to be reduced to inac- 
tion. In 1763, a general Indian war unexpectedly broke out, 
of a most disastrous and alarming character. It threatened 
the loss of some of the important posts which had been wrested 
from the French, and depopulated a great part of the western 
frontiers. Franklin, being asked, on his examination before 
the House of Commons, whether this was not a war for Ame- 
rica only ; answered, that it was rather a consequence or re- 
mains of the former one, the Indians not having been tho- 
roughly pacified ; that the Americans bore much the greater 
share of the expense ; and that it was put an end to by the army 
under general Bouquet, consisting of about three hundred re- 
gulars, and above one thousand Pennsylvanians. 

The pecuniary charges incurred by the colonists in the seven 
years war, greatly exceeded the amount of the sums which were 
allotted to them by the British parliament, as an indemnity. 

* See Note I. 

f It was asserted, without contradiction, in the House of Commons, in the 
debate of March 11, 1778, on the state of the British navy, that ten thou- 
sand of the seamen employed in it during tlie war of 1756, were natives of 
North America. 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

IT I. The excess was two millions five hundred thousand pounds., 
^-^ not taking into the account the extraordinary supplies granted 
by the colonial assemblies. Their whole disbursement did not 
fall short of three millions and a half j a sum far more onerous 
for them, in the proportion of their ability and habits, than 
that which was expended by the crown, great as it was, could 
have been for the British people. 

On the termination of the struggle in Canada, in 1760, and 
the extinction of danger from the French in North America, 
the provinces were fairly entitled to an exemption from all 
contribution to the exterior military enterprises of the mother 
country ; at least until the deep wounds they had received in 
their finances, and the most valuable part of their population, j 
should be healed. A considerable body of native troops was, i 
however, drawn from them, to assist in the reduction of the 
French and Spanish West India islands ; and Massachusetts 
raised, in 1762, three thousand two hundred and twenty, as 
her quota, for the object of " securing the British dominions, j 
and particularly the conquests in her neighbourhood." "Many ^ 
of the common soldiers," says the historian Gordon, " who 
gained such laurels, by their singular bravery on the plains of 
Abraham, when Wolfe died in the arms of victory, were na^ J 
tives of the Massachusetts Bay. When Martinico was attack- » 
ed in 1761, and the British force was greatly weakened by 
death and sickness, the timely arrival of the New England 
troops enabled the former to prosecute the reduction of the 
island to an happy issue. A part of the British force being . 
now about to sail from thence for the Havanna, the New Eng- 
landers, whose health had been much impaired by service and 
the climate, were sent off in three ships, to their native coun- 
try for recovery. Before they had completed their voyage, 
they found themselves restored, ordered the ships about, steer- 
ed immediately for the Havanna, arrived when the British 
were too much reduced to expect success, and by their junc- 
tion, served to immortalize afresh, the glorious first of Au- 
gust, old style, in the surrender of the place on that memora- 
ble day ; they exhibited, at the same time, the most signal evi- 
dence of devotedness to the parent state. Their fidelity, acti- 
vity, and courage, were such as to gain the approbation and 
confidence of the British officers."* 

There are some general considerations which place in strong 



* History of the American Revolution, vol. i, page 103. The writer re- 
ceived his information not only from public, but from private, sources ; he 
cites particularly Brooke Woodcock, Esq. of Saffron Walden, wlio served at 
the taking of Belleisle, Martinico, and the Havanna. 



OF THE COLOMSTS- .||i| 

relief, the merit of the multitude of Americans who served as SKCT,'|(i|, 
volunteers in these campaigns. They cannot be supposed to ^-^^.c.,! 
have been tempted by the slender pay which they received; 
for, their domestic affairs were, in all cases, of a nature to 
suffer greatly by their absence : They could not be incited by 
hopes of preferment, since the provincial forces, were uniform- 
ly disbanded on a peace; the provincial officers no further 
rewarded by commissions than the enlisting of men made it 
neccessary; and the vacancies which occurred among the re- 
gulars, filled w^ith Europeans: They were liable to perpetual 
mortification by invidious distinctions in favour of the British 
troops ; they were penuriously praised when their prowess was 
unquestionable, and outrageously censured when their conduct 
gave the least opening to detraction. Under such circum- 
stances, there are no motives to be assigned for their self- 
devotion, except public spirit, — a sense of duty — a native man- 
liness of character. In truth, the colonists were unsparing 
of their resources and their blood, not merely from a belief 
that the cause was their own, and from a resolution to protect 
themselves to the utmost of their ability; but as members of the 
British empire, eager for its prosperity, and deeply interested 
in all its concerns ; proud of their kindred and connexion with 
the British nation, and sympathetic in its prejudices and pas- 
sions. Whoever gives attention to the public papers of the 
era of the seven years war, will be convinced, that they enter- 
ed into the rivalry between England and France, with the 
keenness of the school of Pitt, and rejoiced in the success 
of the British arms, not more as ministerial to their security, 
than to the ascendency of the British power and the glory of 
the British name. 

10. At the peace of Paris, of 1763, England found herself 
the acknowledged mistress of the whole continent of America 
north of the Gulf of Mexico, and assured of a permanent r^val 
supremacy over the nations of Europe. It is a proposition 
now hardly disputed, even as an exercise of ingenuity, that for 
this vast extension of her power, and the triumph of her for- 
tunes over those of France, she was largely indebted to the 
exiles who adhered to her dominion. Originally, they 
had preserved the Atlantic territory from the occupation of 
her enemies. No great sagacity is required to perceive, that 
had the French settled and retained it, she must have fallen 
into the secondary rank as a naval and commercial power.* 

* " It appears," says Hutchinson, (vol i. chap, i.) " tliat the Massachusetts 
people took, possession of the country at a very critical time. Richheu, in 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

What she became, she never could have become, without the 
thirteen colonies ; and not unless they had become what their 
industry, spirit, and intelligence, made them. Whatever obli- 
gations, then, she can pretend, with any colour of plausibility, 
to have conferred, must fall far short of those which she re- 
ceived. Their instrumentality in her elevation and the de- 
pression of her rival, manifestly overbalances even the degree 
of protection which she herself claims to have extended. And 
the duty of gratitude appears the more exigent, from the con- 
sideration of that British feeling, to which I have referred 
in the preceding page, as the main spring of their prodigious 
efforts in seconding all her aims. 

It will seem scarcely credible, that the politicians of Eng- 
land earnestly debated, during the negotiations for the peace 
of 1763, and while parliament was yet complimenting the 
colonies for their loyal sacrifices, whether Canada should not 
be restored to the French, and the Island of Gaudaloupe re- 
tained in preference. The odium of this controversy, which, 
in its general purport, put out of question every claim and se- 
curity of their American brethren, and admitted of no calcula- 
tion but one of mere commercial profit and loss, was greatly 
aggravated by the principal grounds of argument with some 
of the most eminent writers of the day, who embraced the 
affirmative — " that the colonies were already large and nu- 
merous enough, and that the French ought to be left in North 
America to prevent their increase, lest they should become not 
only useless, but dangerous to Great Britain." " It was in- 
sinuated," says Russel,* " by some of our keen-sighted politi- 



jill probabilily, would have planted his colony nearer the sun, if he could 
have found any place vacant. De Monts and company had acquired a tho- 
roug-h knowledge of all the coast, from Cape Sables, beyond Cape Cod, in 
1604; indeed it does not appear that the}' then went round or to the bot- 
tom of Massachusetts Bay. Had they once gained footing there, they would 
have prevented the English. The Frenchified court of king Charles I. 
would, at the treaty of St. Germain's, have given up any claim to Massachu- 
setts Bay as readily as they did to Acadie; for the French could make out 
no better title to Penobscot and the other parts of Acadie, than they could 
to Massachusetts. The little plantation at New Plymouth would have been 
no greater bar to the French in one place than in the other. The Dutch, 
the next year, would liave quietly possessed themselves of Connecticut river, 
unless the French, instead of the Enghsh, had prevented them. Whether 
the people of either nation would have persevered. Is uncertain. If they 
had done it, the late contest for the /iominion of North America would have 
been between France and Holland, and the commerce of England would 
have borne a very different proportion to that of the rest of Europe, from 
what it does at present." 

* Modern Europe, part ii. letter xxxv. 



OF THE COLONISTS. f»'f ■ 

cians, that the security provided by the retention of Canada, SECt'*/, 
for the English settlements in North America, as xuell as Jor ^^.^^'-y 
their extension in the cession of Florida by Spain^ would prove 
a source of new evils. It would embolden our old colonies 
to shake off the control of the mother country, since they no 
longer stood in need of her protection, and erect themselves 
into independent states." Franklin, who, at this period, as 
agent of some of the provinces at the court of London, watch- 
ed paternally over the interests of the whole, found himself 
under the necessity of combating these doctrines in an elaborate 
tract, which I have already noticed. The very existence of 
the " Canada-Pamphlet" is an eternal reproach to Great Bri- 
tain ; and there is an increase of shame, from its being an ap- 
peal, not to her generosity or her justice, but to her separate 
interests. Upon these, the sagacious author, deeming every 
higher consideration idle and misplaced, laid all stress; and 
the same thing may be said of the British cabinet, on a refe- 
rence to the tenour of the discussions respecting the peace both 
in and out of parliament. Amid the violent discontents which 
the improvident treaty of Paris excited, consolation was found, 
not, as some of her writers have gratuitously alleged, in the 
exemption of the colonies from the annoyance of a European 
enemy, and their increased ability to overawe the savages, — 
but in " the wide scope for projects of political ambition, and 
the boundless field for speculations of commercial avidity, 
which the undivided sovereignty of the vast continent of Ame- 
rica, with the exclusive enjoyment of its trade, seemed to open 
to the British nation."* We may judge how the colonies 
would have fared with the " tory councils," to whose influence 
' the demerits of the peace were attributed, had not the retention 
of Canada fallen within their selfish and corrupt views, when 
we advert to the fact, that the execrable suggestion above 
mentioned came from the ivhigs. To display it in its true light, 
as well as to illustrate the temper of mind, with which the great 
champion of the colonies had to contend, I cannot do better 
than quote his bold language on the point. 

" But what is the prudent policy inculcated to obtain this end 
— security of dominion over our colonies ? It is, to leave the 
French in Canada, to ' check their growth ; for otherwise, our 
people may increase infinitely from all causes,' We have al- 
ready seen in what manner the French and their Indians check 
the growth of our colonies. It is a modest word, this cheeky 
for massacreing men, women, and children." 

• Bu3sel, ibid. 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

T I. ^' But il Canada is restored on this principle, will not Britain 
"^^ be guilty of all the blood to be shed, all the murders to be 
committed, in order to check this dreaded growth of our own 
people ? Will not this be telling the French in plain terms, 
that the horrid barbarities they perpetrated with Indians, on 
our colonists, are agreeable to us; and that they need not ap- 
prehend the resentment of a government with whose views 
they so happily concur ? Will not the colonies view it in this 
light? Will they have reason to consider themselves any 
longer as subjects and children, when they find their cruel 
enemies hallooed upon them by the country from whence they 
sprung; the government that owes them protection, as it re- 
quires their obedience ? Is not this the most likely means of 
driving them into the arms of the French, who can invite 
them by an offer of security, their own government chooses 
not to offer them ?" 

" If it be, after all, thought necessary to check the growth 
of our colonies, give me leave to propose a method less cruel. 
The method I mean, is that which was dictated by the Egyp- 
tian policy, when the ' infinite increase,' of the children of 
Israel, was apprehended as dangerous to the state. Let an act 
of parliament then be made, enjoining the colony midwives 
to stifle in the birth every third or fourth child. By this means 
you may keep the colonies to their present size." 

11. I have made no assertion in treating the topics upon 
which I have enlarged so much, of the military merits of Ame- 
rica, and the nature of the protection extended to her by the 
mother country, which it would not be in my power to vindi- 
cate by British authority of the highest class. And I cannot 
xefrain, though it is done at the risk of fatiguing my readers by 
what may have the air of repetition, from seeking in the records 
of the British Parliament for a general confirmation of what I 
have advanced. I find this, with every recommendation of un- 
questionable validity and sententious eloquence, in a speech 
of David Hartley, on the American question, delivered in the 
House of Commons, in the year 1775. That gentleman long 
held a conspicuous rank in Parliament; lived in the closest in- 
timacy with the most eminent British statesmen of the time; 
concluded, as the minister plenipotentiary of Great Britain, the 
definitive treaty of 1783, with the United States ; and though 
a zealous friend of justice and the injured colonies, establish- 
ed, with all parties at home, the character of a devoted patriot. 
What follows from him will protect me from the charge of 



OF THE COLONISTS. ^ W 

national partiality in my representations, and serve me as a SECTi* 
useful recapitulation of facts. 

Mr. Hartley said, — 

" I would wish to state to the House, the merits of this 
question of requisitions to the colonies, and to see upon what 
principles it is founded ; to revise the accounts between Great 
Britain and them. We hear of nothing now but the protec- 
tion we have given to them ; of the immense expense incur- 
red on their account. We are told that they have done nothing 
for themselves ; that they pay no taxes ; in short, every thing 
is asserted about America to serve the present turn, without 
the least regard to truth. I would have these matters fairly 
sifted out," 

''To begin with the late war, — of '56. The Americans turn- 
ed the success of the war at both ends of the line. General 
Monckton took Beausejour in Nova Scotia, with fifteen hun- 
dred provincial troops, and about two hundred regulars. Sir 
William Johnson, in the other part of America, changed the 
face of the war to success, with a provincial army, which took 
Baron Dieskau prisoner. But, Sir, the glories of the war un- 
der the united British and American arms, are recent in every 
one's memory. Suffice it to decide this question ; that the 
Americans bore, even in our judgment, more than their full 
proportion ; that this House did annually vote them an ac- 
knowledgment of their zeal and strenuous efforts, and com- 
pensation for the excess of their zeal and expenses, above their 
due proportion. They kept, one year with another, twenty- 
five thousand men on foot, and lost in the war the flower of 
their youth. How strange it must appear to them, to hear of 
nothing down to the year 1763, but encomiums upon their ac- 
tive zeal and strenuous efforts ; and then, no longer after 
than the year 1764, in such a trice of time, to see the tide 
turn, and from that hour to this, to hear it asserted that they 
were a burden upon the common cause ; asserted even in that 
same parliament which had voted them compensations for the 
liberality and excess of their service." 

" Nor did they stint their services to North America. They 
followed the British arms out of their continent to the Havan- 
na, and Martinique, after the complete conquest of America. 
And so they had done in the preceding war. They were not 
grudging of their exertions — they were at the siege of Cartha- 
gena : — yet, what was Carthagena to them, but as members 

Vol. I.— S 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

^T '• of the common cause, friends of the glory of this country ! In 
^"'^^ that war too, Sir, they took Louisbourg from the French, sin- 
gle handed, without any European assistance ; as mettled an 
enterprise as any in our history ! an everlasting memorial 
to the zeal, courage, and perseverance of the troops of New 
England. The men themselves dragged the cannon over 
morasses, which had always been thought impassable, where 
neither horses nor oxen could go, and they carried the shot 
upon their backs. And what was their reward for this for- 
M'Sird and spirited enterprise ; for the reduction of this Ame- 
rican Dunkirk ? Their reward. Sir, you know very well — it 
was given up for a barrier to the Dutch. The only conquest 
in that war, which you had to give up, and which would have 
been an effectual barrier to them against the French power in 
America, though gained by themselves, was surrendered for 
a foreign barrier. As a substitute for this, you settled Hali- 
fax for a place (Tarmes^ leaving the limits of the province of 
Nova Scotia as a matter of contest with the French, which 
could not fail to prove, as it did, the cause of another war. 
Had you kept Louisbourg instead of settling Halifax, the 
Americans could say, at least, that there would not have been 
that pretext for imputing the late war to their account. It 
has been their forwardness in your cause, that made them the 
objects of the French resentment. In the war of 1744, at 
jour requisition, they were the aggressors on the French in 
America. We know the orders given to Mons. D'Anville, 
to destroy and lay all their seaport towns in ashes, and we 
know the cause of that resentment ; it was to revenge their 
conquest of Louisbourg." 

" Whenever Great Britain has declared war, they have 
taken their part. They were engaged in king William's wars, 
and queen Anne's, even in their infancy. They conquered 
Acadia in the last century, for us ; and we then gave it up. 
Again, in queen Anne's war, they conquered Nova Scotia, 
■which, from that time, has always belonged to Great Britain. 
They have been engaged in more than one expedition to Ca- 
nada, ever foremost to partake of honour and danger with the 
mother country." 

" Well, Sir, what have we done for them ? Have we con- 
quered the country for them from the Indians ? Have we 
cleared it ? Have we drained it ? Have we made it habitable ? 
What have we done for them ? I believe, precisely nothing at 
all, but just keeping watch and ward over their trade, that 
they should receive nothing but from ourselves, at our own 
l)rice. I will not positively say that we have spent nothing; 



OF THE COLONISTS. i|| 

though I don't recollect any such article upon our journals : SECT|^ 
but I mean any material expense in setting them out as colo- 
nists. The royal military government of Nova Scotia cost, 
indeed, not a little sum ; above ^500,000 for its plantation, 
and its first years. Had your other colonies cost any thing si- 
milar either in their outset or support, there would have been 
something to say on that side ; but, instead of that, they have 
been left to themselves for one hundred or one hundred and 
fifty years, upon the fortune and capital of private adven- 
turers, to encounter every difficulty and danger. What towns 
have we built for them? What desert have we cleared? What 
country have we conquered for them from the Indians ? Name 
the officers — name the troops — the expeditions — their dates. 
Where are they to be found? Not in the journals of this king- 
dom. They are no where to be found." 

" In all the wars which have been common to us and them, 
they have taken their full share. But in all their own dan- 
gers, in the difficulties belonging separately to their situation, 
in all the Indian wars which did not immediately concern us, 
we left them to themselves to struggle their way throvxgh. — 
For the whim of a minister, you can bestow half a million to 
build a town, and to plant a royal colony of Nova Scotia; a 
greater sum than you have bestowed upon every other colony 
together." 

" And notwithstanding all these, which are the real facts, 
now that they have struggled through their difficulties, and 
begin to hold up their heads, and to show that empire which 
promises to be the foremost in the world, we claim them and 
theirs, as implicitly belonging to us, without any considera- 
tion of their own rights. We charge them with ingratitude, 
without the least regard to truth, just as if this kingdom had 
for a century and a half, attended to no other object ; as if all 
our revenue, all our power, all our thought had been bestowed 
upon them, and all our national debt had been contracted in 
the Indian wars of America ; totally forgetting the subordina- 
tion in commerce and manufactures, in which we have bound 
them, and for which, at least, we owe them help towards 
their protection." 

" Look at the preamble of the act of navigation, and every 
American act, and see if the interest of this country is not the 
avowed object. If they make a hat or a piece of steel, an 
act of parliament calls it a nuisance ; a tilting hammer, a steel 
furnace, must be abated in America as a nuisance. Sir, I 
speak from facts. I call your books of statutes and journals 



MILITARY EFFORTS 

to witness. With the least recollection, every one must ac- 
knowledge the truth of these facts." 

" But it is said, the peace establishment of North America 
has been, and is, very expensive to this country. Sir, for 
what it has been, let us take the peace establishment before 
1739, and after 1748. All that I can find in your journals 
is, four companies kept up at New York, and three compa* 
nies in Carolina. As to the four companies at New York, 
this country should knoAv best why they put themselves to 
that expense, or whether really they were at any expense at 
all ; for these were companies of fictitious men. Unless the 
money was repaid into the treasury, it was applied to some 
other purpose ; these companies were not a quarter full. In 
the year 1754, two of them were sent up to Albany, to at- 
tend commissioners to treat with the Six Nations, to impress 
them with a high idea of our military power ; to display all 
the pomp and circumstance of war before them, in hopes to 
scare them ; when in truth, we made a very ridiculous figure. 
The whole complement of two companies did not exceed thirty 
tattered, tottering invalids, fitter to scare the crows. This 
information I have had from eye witnesses." 

" It has not fallen in my way to hear any account of the 
three Carolina companies : These are trifles. The substantial 
question is, — What material expense have you been at in the 
periods alluded to, for the peace establishment of North Ame- 
rica ? Ransack your journals, search your public offices for 
army or ordnance expenses. Make out your bill, and let us 
see what it is. No one yet knows it. Had there been any 
such, I believe the administration would have produced it be- 
fore now, with aggravation." : 

" But is not the peace establishment of North America now 
very high, and very expensive ? I would answer that by ano- 
ther question : Why should the peace establishment since the 
late war, and the total expulsion of the French interest, be 
higher than it was before the late war, and when the French 
possessed above half the American continent ? If it be so, 
there must be some singular reason." 

" I cannot suppose that you mean under the general term of i 
North America, to saddle all the expenses of Canada, Nova i 
Scotia, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Florida, and the West t 
Indies, upon the old colonies of North America. You cannot i 
mean to keep the sovereignty, the property, the possession 
(these are the terms of the cession in the treaty of 1763) to 
yourselves, and lay the expense of the military establishment, 
which you think proper to keep up, upon the old colonies*" 



OF THE COLONISTS. - ||i 

*' Sir, the colonies never thought of interfering in the pre- SECl|;li 
rogative of war or peace ; but if this nation can be so unjust ^•^'^•,.; 
as to meditate the saddling the expense of your new conquests 
separately upon them, they ought to have had a voice in set- 
tling the terms of peace. It is } ou, on this side of the water, 
who have fu*st brought out the idea of separate interests, by 
planning separate and distinct charges. It was their men and 
their money, which had conquered North America and the 
West Indies, as well as yours, though you seized all the spoils; 
but they never thought of dictating to you, what you should 
keep, or what you should give up, little dreaming that you 
reserved the expense of your military governments for them. 
Who gave up the Havanna ? Who gave up Martinique ? Who 
gave up Guadaloupe, with Marigalante ? Who gave up Santa 
Lucia ? Who gave up the Newfoundland fishery ? Who gave 
up all these without their consent, without their participation, 
without their consultation, and, after all, without equivalents ? 
Sir, if your colonies had but been permitted to have gathered up 
the crumbs which have fallen from j'our table, they would gladly 
have supported the whole military establishment of North 
America." 

?: *' Your colonies have now shoM'n you the value of lands in , 
•North America ; and therefore you have vested in the crown 
the sovereignty, property, and possession of infinite tracts of 
land, perhaps as extensive as all Europe, which the crown may 
dispose of at its own price, as the land rises in America, and 
grants become invaluable; and to enable the crown to support 
an arbitrary, military government, till these lands rise to their 
future immense value, you are casting about to saddle the ex- 
pense either upon the American or the British supplies." 
V " This country is very liberal in its boasting of its protection 
and parental kindness to America. It is for that purpose that 
we have converted the province of Canada into an absolute and 
military government, and have established there the Romish 
church, so obnoxious to our ancient, and Protestant colonies. 
What security, what protection do they derive ? In what sort 
are they the better for the conquest of the French dominions, 
•if we take that opportunity to establish a government, civil, 
military, and ecclesiastical, in the utmost degree hostile to the 
government of our own provinces, and with the intent to set a 
thorn in their sides ? Is this affection and parental kindness ? 
Surely you do not expect that they should be taxed and tal- 
liaged to pav fnr this rod of iron, which you aie preparing for 
them !" 



MILITARY EFFORTS, &C. 

" Now, Sir, I come to a point, in which I think you may be 
' said to have given some protection ; I mean the protection of 
your fleet to the American commerce. And even here I am 
at a loss by what terms to call it; whether you are protecting 
yourselves or them. Theirs are your cargoes, your manufac- 
tures, your commerce, your navigation. Every ship from 
America is bound to Britain. None enter an American port 
but British ships and men. While you are defending the 
American commerce, you are defending Leeds and Halifax, 
Sheffield and Birmingham, Manchester and Hull, Bristol and 
Liverpool, London, Dublin, Glasgow. However, as our fleet 
does protect whatever commerce belongs to them, let that be 
set to the account. It is an argument to them as well as to 
us. As it has been the sole policy of this kingdom, for ages, 
by the operation of every commercial act of parliament, to 
make the American commerce totally subservient to our own 
convenience, the least that we owe to them in return is pro- 
tection." 



143 



Si 4 H 



SECTION V. 



OF THE BENEFITS REAPED BY GREAT BRITAIN FROM THE 
AMERICAN TRADE. 



1. If so immense a gain, of which she retains a mighty SECT 
part in her actual North American possessions, accrued to ^«^'~>'* 
Great Britain from the military efforts of the thirteen colonies, 
the advantages which she found in her commercial connexion 
with them, were not less considerable. Before any thing had 
been expended upon them, they began to enrich the treasury, 
and feed the strength of the mother country, by augmenting 
her shipping, giving double activity to her trade and manufac- 
tures, and even accelerating the increase of her population. 
These effects were quickly perceived and announced by those 
of her earliest writers in political economy, to whom she has 
assigned the first rank among their cotemporaries. To begin 
with the testimony of Sir Josiah Child. " England has con- 
stantly improved in people, since our settlement upon the plan- 
tations in America. We are very great gainers by the direct 
trade of New with Old England. Our yearly exportations of 
English manufactures, malt and other goods from hence 
thither, amounting, in my opinion, to ten times the value of 
what is imported from thence, which calculation I do not make 
at random, but upon mature consideration, and peradventure, 
upon as much experience in this trade, as any other person will 
pretend to."* " The plantations," says Davenant, " are a 
spring of wealth to this nation; they work for us, and their 
treasure centres all here. It is better our islands should be 
supplied from the northern colonies than from England — the 
provisions to be sent to them would be the unimproved pro- 
duct of the earth, whereas the goods which we send to the 
northern colonies, are such whose improvement may be justly 
said, one with another, to be near four-fourths of the value of 
the whole commodity."! 



• Discourse on Trade, chap. x. 
t Discourse on Plantation Trade. 



COMMERCIAL OBLIGTATIONS, &,C. 

fll i. " An immense wealth," says Gee,* " has accrued to us by 
"""^ the labour and industry of those people that have settled in our 
colonies. Of all the methods of enlarging our trade, the best 
was the finding out of our plantations — the tobacco and sugar 
plantations were indeed the cause of increasing our shipping 
and navigation. If we examine into the circumstances of the 
inhabitants of our plantations, it will appear that not one-fourtl\ 
part of their product redounds to their own profit. There are 
very few trading or manufacturing towns in the kingdom, but 
have some dependence on the plantation trade." 

" New England and the northern colonies have not com- 
modities and products enough to send us in return for purchasing 
their necessary clothing, but are under very great difficulties, 
and therefore any ordinary sort sells with them; and when 
they are grown out of fashion with us, they are new fashioned 
enough there ; and therefore those places are the great markets 
we have to dispose of such goods, which are generally sent 
at the risk of the shop-keepers and traders of England, who 
are the great exporters, and not the inhabitants of the colonies, 
as some have imagined. As the colonies are a market for 
those sort of goods, so they are a receptacle for young mer- 
chants who have not stocks of their own; and therefore all 
our plantations are filled with such who receive the consign- 
ments of their friends from hence; and when they have got a 
sufficient stock to trade with, they generally return home, and 
other young men take their places ; so that the continual mo- 
tion and intercourse our people have in the colonies, may be 
compared to bees of a hive, which go out empty, but come 
back again loaded, by which means the foundation of many 
families is laid. The numbers of sailors and other tradesmen, 
who have all their dependence upon this traffic, are prodigiously 
great. Our factors, who frequent the northern colonies, being 
under difficulties to make returns for such goods as they dis- 
pose of, what gold, silver, logwood, and other commodities . 
they trade for upon the Spanish coast, is sent home to England; ; 
as also oyl, whale-fins, and many other goods. Likewise 
another great part in returns is made by ships, built there, and I 
disposed of in the Streights, and other parts of Europe, and I; 
the money remitted to us." 

" There is another advantage we receive from our planta'-. 
tions, which is hardly so much as thought on; I mean the 
prodigious increase of our shipping, by the timber trade be- 
tween Portugal, &c. and our plantations, which ought to have • 

* On the Trade and Navigation of Great Britain, chap. xxxi. 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. l||li 

all possible encouragement; for by it we have crept into all SLCli'i ' 
the comers of Europe, and become the common carriers in ■^-^'-v^vii'il 
the Mediterranean, as well as between the Mediterranean, 
Holland, Hambr'o, and the Baltic, and this is the cause of so 
great an addition to our shipping, and the reason why the 
Dutch, &c. are so exceedingly sunk." 

" We have a great many young men who are bred to the 
sea, and have friends to support them ; if they cannot get em- 
ployment at home, they go to New England, and the northern 
colonies, with a cargo of goods, which they there sell at 
a very great profit, and with the produce build a ship, and 
purchase a loading of lumber, and sail for Portugal or the 
Streights, &c. and after disposing of their cargoes there, fre- 
quently ply from port to port in the Mediterranean, till they 
have cleared so much money as will in a good part pay for the 
first cost of the cargo carried out by them, and then perhaps 
sell their ships, come home, take up another cargo from their 
employers, and so go back and build another ship; by this 
means multitudes of seamen are brought up, and upon a war 
the nation better provided with a greater number of sailors 
than hath been heretofore known. Here the master becomes 
merchant also, and many of them gain by this lumber trade 
great estates, and a vast treasure is thereby yearly brought into 
the kingdom, in a way new and unknown to our forefathers, 
for indeed it is gaining the timber trade, (heretofore carried 
on by the Danes and Swedes,) our plantations being nearer 
the markets of Portugal and Spain than they are." ^ 

The great pi'oductiveness of the colonies to the mother 
country, thus recognized before the expiration, and at the be- 
ginning, of the eighteenth century, increased in a geometrical 
progression from that period, and drew equally pointed ac- 
knowledgments from later writers. In the year 1728, Sir 
William Keith, a man of superior sagacity, who had occupied 
the station of governor of Pennsylvania, and investigated per- 
sonally and in complete detail, the commercial relations of 
North America with the other parts of the British empire, 
submitted to the British government a very able discourse on 
the subject,^ in which he presented the following summary of 
what he styled " the principal benefits then arising to Great 
Britain from the trade of the colonies." 

" 1. The colonies take off and consume above one-sixth 
part of the woollen manufactures exported from Great Britain ; 

* See the whole of this curious and interesting paper, in Bark's History 
of Virginia, vol. ii. chap. ii. 

Vol. I.— T 



j COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

RT I. which is the chief staple of England, and the main support of 
■v-^b^ the landed interest. 

" 2. They take off and consume more than double that value 
in linen and calicoes, v/hich are partly the product of Britain 
and Ireland, and partly the profitable returns made for that 
product when carried to foreign countries. 

" 3. The luxury of the colonies, which increases daily, con- 
sumes great quantities of English manufactured silks, haber- 
dashery, household furniture, and trinkets of all sorts, as also 
a very considerable value in East India goods. 

" 4. A great revenue is raised to the crown of Britain hj 
returns made in the produce of the plantations, especially to- 
bacco; which at the same time helps England to bring nearer 
to a balance her unprofitable trade with France. 

" 5. These colonies promote the interest and trade of Bri- 
tain, by a vast increase of shipping and seamen, which enables 
them to carry great quantities of fish to Spain, Portugal, Leg- 
horn, &c. ; furs, logwood, and rice, to Holland, where they 
keep Great Britain considerably in the balance of trade with 
those countries. 

" 6. If reasonably encouraged, the colonies are now in a 
condition to furnish Britain with as much of the following 
commodities as it can demand, viz : masting for the navy and 
all sorts of timber, hemp, flax, pitch, tar, oil, rosin, copper ore, 
with pig and bar iron; by means whereof the balance of trade 
to Russia and the Baltic, may be very much reduced in favour 
of Great Britain. 

" 7. The profits arising to all those colonies by trade, are 
returned in bullion, or rather useful effects, to Great Britain ; 
where the supei-fluous cash, and other riches, acquired in 
America, must centre ; which is not one of the least securities 
that Britain has, to keep the colonies always in due subjection. 

" 8. The colonies upon the main are the granary of Ameri- 
ca, and a necessary support to the sugar plantations, in the 
West Indies, which could not subsist without them." 

To exemplify further the nature of this commercial inter- 
course, for Great Britain, I will quote the case of Virginia and 
Maryland, as Macpherson represents it for the year 1731, from 
the best authorities of that day.* 

" Virginia and Maryland are most valuable acquisitions to: 
Britain, as well for their great staple commodity, tobacco, as; 
for pitch, tar, furs, deer skins, walnut tree planks, iron in pigs,i 
and medicinal drugs. Both together send annually to Great 



* Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. ||| 

Britain, 60,000 hogsheads of toljacco, weighing, one with SEC1;J| 
another, 600 pounds weight, which at 2^d. per pound, comes 
to ^375,000. And the shipping employed to bring home 
their tobacco, must be at least 24,000 tons ; which at ^10 per 
ton, is =g240,000, the value of the shipping ; the greatest part 
thereof by far being English-built, continually and constantly 
fitted and repaired in England. The freight at 1/. 10s. per 
hogshead, (the lowest,) is ^90,000 ; and the petty charges and 
commission, on each hogshead, not less than ^1 or ^60,000; 
which, making together ^150,000, we undoubtedly receive 
from those two provinces upon tobacco only. The net pro- 
ceeds of the tobacco may be ^225,000, on which there may 
be about five per cent, commission and petty charges, being 
^11,250. There is also imported in the tobacco ships from 
those two provinces, lumber, to the value of ^15,000, two- 
thirds whereof is clear gain, it not costing ^4,000, in that 
country, first cost in goods ; and as it is the master's privilege, 
there is no freight paid for it. Skins and furs, about ^6,000 
value; ^4,000 of which is actual gain to England. So the 
whole gain to England amounts to about ^180,000, annually: 
and moreover the whole produce of these two provinces is 
paid for in goods." 

Postlethwayt, who published his Universal Dictionary of 
Trade in the middle of the last century, bears a most emphatic 
general testimony. " Our trade and navigation," says this 
erudite merchant, " are greatly increased by our colonies ; they 
are a source of treasure and naval power to this kingdom. 
Before their settlements — our manufactures were fev/, and 
those but indifferent — the number of English merchants very 
small, and the whole shipping of the nation much inferior to 
what now belongs to the northern colonies only. These are 
certain facts. But since their establishment, our situation has 
altered for the better almost to a degree beyond credibility. 
Our manufactures are prodigiously increased, — chiefly by 
the demand for them in the plantations, where they at least 
take off one-half, and supply us with many valuable commo- 
dities for exportation, which is as great an emolument to the 
mother kingdom as to the plantations themselves," &c. 

The North American export trade of Great Britain amount- 
ed, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, to something 
less than four hundred thousand pounds sterling ; then no in- 
considerable portion of her whole exports. It had attained 
before the separation — to three millions and an half sterling, 
nearly one-fourth of her whole cotemporaneous export trade, 
the product of centuries of intercourse with all the world. 



COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

The particular instance of the Pennsylvania trade furnished an 
illustration of the general increase, which struck the British 
statesmen with admiration. In the year 1704, that province 
consumed only ^11,459 in value of foreign commodities : in 
1772, fifty times as much; in this last year the export to it 
from Great Britain was upwards of half a million sterling. 

The exports to the North American colonies alone — ex- 
cluding the portion of the African trade to be set down to 
their account, — was one million on an average, from 1739 to 
1756— two million three hundred thousand from 1756 to 
1773 — three millions and an half on a medium of the years 
1771, 1772, 1773. The proportion of British goods to foreign 
goods exported to North America, was of three-fourths British 
and one-fourth foreign ; whereas to the West Indies, it was of 
two-thirds British and one-third foreign. 

The foreign and circuitous trade of the northern colonies, 
which was prosecuted only by a necessary relaxation, or by 
an evasion, of the navigation act, redounded equally to the 
profit of the mother country. It enabled the colonies to pay, 
and consequently led them to call, for a greater quantity of 
her manufactures. It is thus fully and accurately described 
in the third volume of Macpherson's Annals. " The old 
northern colonies in America, it is well known, had very few 
articles fit for the British market; and yet they every year 
took ofFlarge quantities of merchandise from Great Britain, for 
which they made payments with tolerable regularity. Though 
they could not, like the Spanish colonists, dig the money out 
of their own soil, they found means to make a great part of 
their remittances in gold and silver dug out of the Spanish 
mines. This they effected by being great carriers, and by a 
circuitous commerce, carried on in small vessels, chiefly with 
the foreign West India settlements, to which they took lum- 
ber of all sorts, fish of an inferior quality, beef, pork, butter, 
horses, poultry, and other live stock ; an inferior kind of to- 
bacco, corn, flour, bread, cyder, and even apples, cabbages, 
and onions, &c. ; and also vessels, built at a small expense, the 
materials being almost all within themselves; for which they 
received in return mostly silver and gold, some of which re- 
mained as current coin among themselves ; but the greatest t 
part was remitted home to Britain, and together with bills of ; 
exchange, generally remitted to London for the proceeds of I 
their best fish, sold in the Roman Catholic countries of Europe, , 
served to pay for the goods they received from the mother 
country. This trade united all the advantages, which the 
wisest and most philanthropic philosopher, or the most en- 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. J|| 

lightened legislator, could wish to derive from commerce. It SECT<,| 
grave bread to the industrious in North America, by carrying 
off their lumber, which must otherwise rot on their hands, and 
their fish, great part of which, without it would be absolutely 
unsaleable, together with their spare produce and stock of every 
kind; it furnished the West India planters with those articles, 
without which the operations of their plantations must be at a 
stand ; and it produced a fund for employing a great number of 
industrious manufacturers in Great Britain; thus taking off the 
superfluities, providing for the necessities, and promoting the 
happiness of all concerned." 

Lord Sheffield even, makes the acknowledgment, that, by 
this circuitous commerce, they must, in the interval between the 
years 1700 and 1773, have obtained from other countries, and 
remitted to Great Britain, upwards oi thirty millions sterling^'m 
payment of goods taken from her, over and above the amount of 
all their produce and fisheries remitted directly.* Mr. Glover, 
in the beautiful speech which he delivei^ed at the bar of the 
House of Commons, in 1 775^ respecting the American trade, 
presented, ainong many striking views of its productiveness to 
Great Britain, the following: " Though I am convinced, that 
the same number of hands at least is devoted to agriculture here, 
and that the earth at a medium of years hath yielded the same 
increase ; as we have been disposed to consume it all among 
ourselves, or as our presumption may impute the scarcity to 
Providence, restraining the fertility of our soil for ten years past, 
in either case we could not spare, as heretofore, our grain to 
the foreigner; a reduction in our exports, one year with another, 
of more than ^600,000. The American subjects took place 
of the British in markets we could no longer supply; extend- 
ed their vent from season to season, and from port to port, and 
by a circuition of fresh money, thus acquired by themselves, 
added fresh numbers to your manufactures ; the rents of land 
increasing at the same time, till the amount of exports to North 
America, for the last three years ending at Christmas, 1773, 
stands upon your papers at ten millions and a half, or three 
millions and a half at the annual medium." 

" One part of our export to foreigners is supplied by colony 
produce, tobacco, rice, sugar, 6cc. through Great Britain, for a 
million sterling at a low estimation. There is a known export 
of linen, exceeding ^200,000, supplied by North Britain to 
England for American use. The North British colony-export 
in addition, is about ^400,000, by far the greater part to 

• Observations on the Commerce of the American States, 1784. 



J COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIO.NS 

IRT I. the tobacco provinces. The whole may be a little short of 
"v-^^ ^700,000. The kingdom of Ireland takes from England little 
short of ^2,400,000 annually in goods. How doth she pay 
for them i A large part in linen and yarn ; the remainder in 
cash, acquired by her foreign traffic. In the printed report to 
this House, from their linen committee, it appears, that, in 
1771, the linen made, and brought to market for sale in that 
kingdom, for its own use and ours, amounted to ^2,150,000, 
and the yarn exported to about ^200,000. This immense va- 
lue, the employment of such numbers, hath its source in North 
America. The flax seed from thence, not worth ^40,000, a 
trifle to that continent, forms the basis of Ireland, and reverts 
largely in manufacture from her to the original seat of growth. 
In reply, what is the cry of my magnanimous countrymen 
without doors ? Dignity ! Supremacy ! &c. Upon the North 
American imports I shall only remark, that the most considera- 
ble part of their bulky productions is bought by the foreigner; 
and of the amount consumed in Great Britain, the exchequer 
hath a capital share." 

3. In the calculation which Mr. Burke presented to the 
House of Commons, in his speech on the Conciliation with 
America, he included the export trade of Great Britain to the 
West Indies, upon the ground that this trade and the North 
American were so interwoven, that the attempt to separate 
them would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole, and if 
not entirely destroy, very much depreciate the value of all the 
parts. The observation was eminently just, as nothing can be 
more certain, than that the prosperity of the West Indies 
would have been infinitely less, without their trade with the 
North American colonies. It was by this means that they were 
enabled to yield those ample benefits which Great Britain 
derived from them, in the great consumption and increase of 
her manufactures; in the employment and increase of her 
shipping and sailors; in the enrichment of individuals ; and in 
the abundance of the valuable produce poured into her lap. 
Great as these benefits were, they fell, however, far short 
of those of the same kind, which accrued to her directly from 
the North American colonies. For five years, from 1754, to 
1758, inclusive, her exports to the latter, wei^e, in the total, near 
eight millions sterling; to the West Indies, not four millions; . 
and in the course of the term just mentioned, the increase 
of export to the northern colonies, was almost four mil- 
lions ; whereas that to the West Indies, did not amount to half 
a million. 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. l|| 

The value of the provisions sent from Great Britain to her SECT^Jj 
West India islands was trifling. They were furnished with the *^^"^,v; 
necessaries of life by the North American colonies, and gene- 
rally at about half the price at which they could have been 
supplied from Great Britain. We are told by Dr. Davenant, in 
his Discourse on the Plantation Trade, that, " before the period 
at which he wrote, (1698,) so little cai^e was taken for the con- 
voys which were to protect the supplies of provisions for the 
West India islands, they must, many times, have perished for 
want, if they had not been supplied by the northern colonies." 
The mother country, was, indeed, for the most part, unable to 
supply them at all, and occasionally indebted to the same source 
as her islands, for her vital sustenance. " Our harvests," says 
an able English writer,* "■ in a series of years were not suffi- 
ciently productive to afford support to the people; whilst Ame- 
rica was blessed with abundance, and like another Egypt to 
another Canaan, relieved us from the apprehension of a want of 
food, and from the danger of popular commotions, to obtain by 
force what the poor were not able to procure by purchase. Such 
was the scarcity of corn in this country, at the period preceding 
the American war, that even the immense importations from 
thence proved no more than a bare supply." 

To this state of things, Mr. Bui'ke thus eloquently alludes, ^ 
in the speech mentioned above. " For some time past the old 
world has been fed from the new. The scarcity which you 
have felt, would have been a desolating famine, if this child of 
your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman charity, 
had not put the full breast of its youthful exuberance to the 
mouth of its exhausted parent." 



* Richard Champion, Esq. deputy pay master general of his Britannic 
majesty's forces, (1784,) in his reply to Lord Sheffield's pamphlet. On the 
head of the provision for the West Indies, the same enlightened economist 
makes the following remarks. " It has been asked by the noble lord, how- 
did the West India colonies subsist, during the war, when even Canada and 
Nova Scotia, any more than England, were not open to them, without great 
expense and risque ? To this question, it is to be answered, that the 
greater part of the Windward and Leeward Islands were in possession of the 
French ; and the three which remained in our hands, were frequently re- 
duced to great distress. The planters in some of them compromised the 
labour of their slaves for a slender daily food. The situation of Bermuda wa& 
so deplorable, that some of the poorest inhabitants were actually famished; 
and it was owing to the hummiitij of the Americans who suffered them, tipon 
their application, to sxtpply themselves ivith provisions from their states, (from 
Delaware and Connecticut in particular,) that the whole people did not 
pei-ish for want." 



COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

Besides provisions, supplies of other kinds, which might be 
also said to have been indispensable, and unattainable from any- 
other quarter, were carried to the West Indies by the North 
American colonies. We are told by the English writers, that 
not less than one hundred thousand casks and puncheons were, 
in a year, made in Jamaica, from American staves and head- 
ing; that the different towns and the buildings in most of the 
settlements upon the sea coast of that island, were constructed 
with timber imported from America, and that the same use 
of those articles, — many of them in a greater proportion,— 
prevailed in the other sugar islands. Bryan Edwards* esti- 
mated the whole value of the American commodities im- 
ported into them annually, at seven hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds sterling. The Americans received West India pro- 
duce in barter, to the amount of about two-thirds, and the 
excess of one-third found its way to England for the purchase 
or payment of goods. Sugar to a great amount, and a vast 
quantity of rum, saleable at no other than the American mar- 
ket, were among the chief articles taken in return. Some 
short extracts from the testimony which the West India mer- 
chants gave at the bar of the House of Commons in 1775, 
will exhibit this intercourse with more minuteness and au- 
thority. 

" North America is truly the granary of the West Indies : 
from thence they draw the great quantities of flour and bis- 
cuit, for the use of one class of people, and of Indian corn, 
for the support of all the others; for the support not of man 
only, but of every animal ; for the use of man, horses, swine, 
sheep, poultry. North America also furnishes the West In- 
dies with rice. Rice, a more expensive diet, and less capa- 
ble of sustaining the body under hard labour, is of a more 
limited consumption, but it is a necessary indulgence for the 
young, the sick, the weakly, amongst the common people, and 
the negroes. North America not only furnishes the West 
Indies with bread, but with meat, with sheep, poultry, and*, 
some live cattle; but the demand for these is infinitely short ofi 
the demand for the salted beef, pork and fish. Salted fish- 
(if the expression may be permitted in contrast with bread,) 
is the meat of all the lower ranks of people in Barbadoes, and- 
the Leeward Islands. It is the meat of all the slaves in the^ 
West Indies. Nor is it disdained by persons of better con- • 
dition. The North American navigation also furnishes the; 



Thoughts on the connexion between America and the West Indies 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. m 

,J '■ r 

sugar colonies with salt from Turk's Island, Sal Tortuga, and SECT,| i 
Anguilla, although these islands are themselves a part of the n^^v',"* 
West Indies. The testimony which some experience has en- 
abled me to bear, you will find confirmed by official accounts." 

" For almost every purpose of the carpenter and the cooper, 
it is the lumber of North America that is used. The part 
which is furnished by the middle colonies of North America, 
is out of all proportion to the others. Without lumber to re- 
pair the buildings they run immediately to decay. And with- 
out lumber for the proper packages for sugar, and to contain 
rum, they cannot be sold at market ; they cannot even be kept 
at home." 

" As to rum, the dependence of all the islands, except Ja- 
maica, is as great upon the middle colonies of North Ame- 
rica, for the consumption of their rum, as it is for subsistence 
and for lumber. The rum of Barbadoes, the Leeward Islands, 
and the government of Granada, does not come into England, 
except in small portions. It goes in part to Ireland ; and all 
the rest, the great quantity, is distributed chiefly among the 
middle colonies of North America, agreeable to the law of re- 
ciprocal exchange." 

4. The mother country was benefitted in her eastern em- 
pire, by the great consumption of tea in North America. 
Our advocates in England, during the disputes which imme- 
diately preceded the rupture, alleged that her usual annual de- 
mand had amounted to ^600,000 sterling, besides great sums 
for piece-goods and china ware. It is suggested in Macpher- 
son's Annals of Commerce,* that there was probably, some 
exaggeration in this statement ; but admitting the amount to 
have been less, it must still have formed an important contri- 
bution to the funds of the East India Company. 

Of the vast quantities of lumber imported by Great Bri- 
tain and Ireland, no inconsiderable part was drawn from the 
middle colonies of North America. The trade arising out 
of the cod fishery, furnished near one half of the remittances, 
from the New England provinces to the mother country. 
The produce of their cod fishery was divided into two- 
fifths of salted fish for the European market, and three- 
fifths for the West India market, and the amounts of sales 
in the European continental markets, went to Great Britain 
in payment of goods purchased there. The spermaceti, 
whale oil, and whale bone, proceeding from the whale fishery. 



* Vol. iii. p. 545, 

Vol. I.— U 



COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

as well as the greater part of the cod oil, were sent to Great 
Britain, and ministered essentially to her manufactures. Ac- 
cording to the statements made in 1775, by the merchants en- 
gaged in the American trade, to the House of Commons, the 
fishery generally, and carrying the fish to market from New 
England, employed at that period about fourteen hundred and 
fifty vessels, of one hundred thousand tons burthen, and 
eleven thousand fishermen and seamen. 

The growth and extent of the American fisheries are thus 
exhibited by Seybert in his Statistics. " In 1670, the cod 
fishery was commenced by the people in New England ; such 
was their application, that in 1675, they had in this employ- 
ment six hundred and sixty-five vessels, which measured 
25,650 tons, and navigated by 4,405 seamen; at that early 
period, they caught at the rate of from 350,000 to 400,000 
quintals of fish per annum. In 1715, our fishermen first pur- 
sued the whale. The fish then known as the Greenland whale, 
frequented our northern coasts ; in a very short time, the ac- 
tivity and success of the colonists in taking them, forced them 
into more southern latitudes, where the intruders were follow- 
ed by the harpoons of their former enemies ; they were chased 
off the Azores, along the coast of Africa and Brazil, to the 
remote regions of Falkland's Island. The discovery of a new 
species of whale was the consequence of this extensive and pe- 
rilous circumnavigation; the new fish was found to be more 
valuable than that on our northern coasts ; to it they gave the 
name of the spermaceti whale." 

" In 1771, the Americans employed one hundred and eighty- 
three vessels, measuring 1 3,820 tons, in the northern ; and one 
hundred and twenty-one vessels, measuring 14,020 tons, in 
the southern whale fishery ; these vessels gave employment 
to 4,059 seamen. From 1771 to 1775, Massachusetts em- 
ployed annually one hundred and eighty-three vessels, of! 
13,120 tons, in the northern whale fishery, and one hundred I 
and twenty one vessels, of 14,026 tons, in the southern; na- 
vigated by 4,059 seamen." 

" Before the revolutionary war, the small island of Nan- 
tucket had sixty-five ships, of 4,875 tons, annually employedl 
in the northern; and eighty-five ships, of 10,200 tons, in thfc; 
southern fishery."* 

* Feb. 9, 1778, on the examination of witnesses at the bar of Parliament, 
respecting the commercial losses by the war with America — " Mr. George i 
Davis averred that he had been twenty-six years concerned in the whale and' 
cod fishery; in respect to the former, he tried to take •m-liales -with men from' 
England, but though they could strike them, and had struck several of late 
he had not as vet taken one," &c 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. | 

The fact is not a little significative, that for the encourage- SEGr 
ment of the British fisheries separately, oil and whale fins, '^i^^. 
taken in ships belonging to Great Britain, were allowed to be 
I imported in her vessels, duty free ; while a duty was imposed 
i on the importation of the same articles, taken or imported in 
vessels belonging to the plantations. Few of my readers can 
be strangers to the splendid panegyric of Burke upon the un- 
paralleled industry and hardihood displa3'ed by New England 
in the pursuit of the whale. It may not be unseasonable to re- 
xall the rebuke addressed to the British Parliament, with which 
he prefaced it, as well as the merit which he coiiimemorated. 
" As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea 
by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your 
bar. You surely thought those acquisitions of value, since 
they seemed even to excite your envy ; and yet the spirit by 
which that enterprising employment has been exercised, ought 
rather, in my opinion, to have raised your admiration. What 
in the world is equal to it," &c. 

5. So considerable a trade as that between the colonies -^ 
■' and the rest of the British empire produced a correspondent 
increase of shipping. The one hundred thousand hogsheads 
of tobacco, and the sixty thousand barrels of rice,* annually 
imported into Great Britain, — employed in the transporta- 
tion, seventy thousand tons of shipping, almost wholly be- 
longing to her ports. Altogether, one thousand and seventy- 
eight ships, and twenty-eight thousand nine hundred and 
ten seamen, were engaged in the American trade. The 
building of ships for sale formed a material branch of the 
industry of the northern and middle colonies, and was 
brought to great perfection, particularly at Philadelphia. 
They supplied the mother countrv with considerable numbers, 
at prices much inferior to the standard rate of her cheapest 
' ports. She found an important advantage in this supply, in- 
*asmuch as it was necessary to the support of her carrying 



* By the act of 3 Geo. II. c. 28. all rice was, for the second time, declared 
to be among the enumerated commodities, which were to pay a tax on be- 
ing' transported from colony to colony, and wliich could not be carried di- 
rectly to any foreign market. This act established, however, an exception 
to the general rule ; and allowed that "any of his majesty's subjects, in any 
ship or vessel btiilt in Great Britain, or belonging to any of his majesty's 
subjects residing in Great Britain, navigated according to law, and having 
cleared outward in any port of Great Britain for the province of Carolina, 
may ship rice in the same province, and carry the same directly to any part 
of Europe, to the southward of Cape Finisterre." 



COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIOiNS 

r I- trade, which, to use the language of her writers, " attained 
"^ to an amazing height by the aid of her colonies." She was 
unable to provide enough of ships of her own construction to 
answer her purposes ; and this is attested by the fact, that in 
the course of the revolutionary war, when America ceased to 
be the provider, the foreign shipping employed in her com- 
merce, which before had borne the proportion of twelve to 
forty, rose to that of twenty -nine to thirty-five. Of the ship- 
ping employed in the commerce of Great Britain, 398,000 
tons were of the built of America. According to Dr. Sey- 
bert's Statistics, the proportion of the tonnage employed in 
the commerce of the colonies and Great Britain, owned by 
the inhabitants of Great Britain, amount to about three and 
two-third eighths ; the proportion which belonged to British 
merchants, occasionally resident in those colonies, was about 
two-eighths, making together nearly six-eighths of the whole, 
and the proportion of the tonnage so employed, which belong- 
ed to merchants, who were natives and permanent inhabitants 
of those colonies, was rather more than two and one-third 
eighths of the whole. 

Of the tonnage employed in the trade of the colonies with 
the British West Indies, five-eighths belonged to merchants, 
who were permanent inhabitants of those colonies, and three- 
eighths to British merchants, who resided occasionally in the 
colonies. 

None of the colonies to the north of Maryland ever had a 
balance in their favour in the trade with the mother country j 
but always, on the contrary, a large balance against them. 
The exports of all the colonies, for the year 1 770, amounted 
at least to three millions sterling ;* the whole of which may 
be said to have turned to her account. What she did not con- 
sume herself of their productions, she received as the entre- 
pot for Europe, to the great inconvenience and loss of the 
American owner ; and the proceeds of that proportion of them 
— one-sixth only — which went directly from America to con- 
tinental Europe, were invested in her manufactures. I do 
not think it necessary to mark the particular utility of the 
several articles which she consumed, and will content myself 
on this head, with repeating after Mr. Burke, " If I were to 
detail the imports of England from North America, I could 

* " An estimate was made this year," (1769) says Macpherson, (Annals, 
vol. iii. p. 493,) " of the trade of the North American Provinces, including 
Hudson's Bay and Newfoundland ; and the exports from Great Britain, are 
made to amount to 3,370,900/. and the exports from tlie colonies to 
3,924,626;." &c. 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. if% 

show how many enjoyments they procured, which deceive the SECli i 
burden of life; how many materials which invigorated the v.^v.m'^i 
springs of national industry, and extended and animated every 
part of British foreign and domestic commerce." With respect I 

to the trade with the Indians in America, that was wholly on | 

account of Great Britain. Dr. Franklin stated, in his exami- 
nation before the House of Commons, what could not be de- 
nied, — that this trade " though carried on in America was not 
an American interest; that the people of America were chiefly 
farmers and planters, and scarce any thing which they raised 
or produced was an article of commerce with the Indians; that 
the Indian trade was a British interest; was carried on with 
British manufactures for the profit of British merchants and 
manufacturers." 

Connected with this head of the trade between the colonies 
and the mother country, there is one accusation often repeated 
agamst the former, on which I would say a few words : I allude ^'' 
to their pretended backwardness in paying their debts to the 
British merchants. This accusation was abundantly refuted 
by the British merchants and manufacturers themselves ; who 
bore emphatic testimony at the bar of the House of Commons, 
in 1775, of the fair dealing and good faith of their Ameri; an 
customers. It is, moreover, rendered highly improbable, by 
the fact, that, although six millions sterling were owing the 
latter, in December, 1774, yet, in December, 1775, two mil- 
lions only remained to be paid ; four millions having been re- 
mitted, even when a separation seemed inevitable.* It is 
true, that at an earlier period, some few British traders had 
complained of the laws in force in the plantations, for the re- 
covery of debts, and that parliament had, in consequence, 
passed a tyrannical bill,f which altered the nature of evidence 
in their courts of common law, and the nature of their estates, 
by treating real estates as chattels. To facilitate the proof 
and recovery of debts, it enacted, that an affidavit taken be- 
fore the mayor, or other chief magistrate of any town in Eng- 
land, and properly authenticated, should be received as legal 
evidence in all the courts of the plantations, and have the same 
force and effect as the personal oath of the plaintiff made there 
in open court ; and that lands, houses, negroes, and all real 
estate whatsoever, should be liable to, and chargeable with all 
debts due either to the king, or any of his subjects, and be as- 
sets for the satisfaction thereof, &:c. 



Champion, p. 269. f 5 Geo. II. c. 7. 



COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

6. On this subject of the trade of America with the mother 
country, it would have been almost enough to have cited the 
testimony borne by Mr. Burke and Lord Chatham. The fol- 
lowing passage of the speech of the former, on the Concilia- 
tion with America, arose immediately out of his consideration 
of the custom house returns, and of the evidence of notorious 
facts. " The trade with America alone is now within less 
than ^500,000 of being equal to what this great commercial 
nation, England, carried on at the beginning of this century 
with the whole world! If I had taken the largest year of those 
on your table, it would rather have exceeded. But, it will be 
said, is not this American trade an unnatural protuberance, 
that has drawn the juices from the rest of the body? The're- 
verse. It is the very food that has nourished every other part 
into its present magnitude. Our general trade has been greatly 
augmented; and augmented more or less, in almost every part : 
to which it ever extended; but with this material difference j- 
that of the six millions which in the beginning of the century, , 
constituted the whole mass of our export commerce, the colony ' 
trade was about one-twelfth part; it is now (as a part of sixteen : 
millions) considerably more than a third of the whole." 

There is something still more direct and conclusive in the 
language of Chatham. He spoke with all the authority which 
official station could possibly give in any matter. " When II 
had the honour of serving his majesty, I availed myself," said 
this illustrious statesmen, in one of his speeches against Grertr^ 
ville's scheme of taxation, " of the means of information, 
which I derived from my office ; I speak therefore from know- 
ledge. My materials were good. I was at pains to collect,! 
to digest, to consider them; and I will be bold to affirm, that.; 
the profit to Great Britain, from the trade of the colonies, 
through all its branches, is trvo yyiiU'ions a year. This is the 
fund that carried you triumphantly through the last war. The 
estates that were rented at two thousand pounds a year, three- 
score years ago, are three thousand pounds at present. Those 
estates sold then from fifteen to eighteen years purchase ; the 
same may now be sold for thirty. Ton oxve this to Americtu 
This is thi', price America pays you for her protection.'''* 

The quotations which I have made from Adam Smith, fni 
the first section, develop the nature of the commercial r6H 
straint under which the colonies existed. It was, in the 
theory, a condition of rigorous servitude. They could 
import no commodity, — with the exception of a few articles,— 
of the growth or manufacture of Europe, but through Great 
Britain ; they were allowed a direct foreign trade, only so iaij 






OF GREAT BRITALN. Jyil] 

as was required by her interests. " The policy of Great Bri- SECTj|; 
tain," said Mr. Burke, addressing the House of Commons, ""-^"^V,^ 
" was, from the beginning, the system of a monopoly. No 
trade was let loose from that constraint, but merely to enable 
the colonists to dispose of what, in the course of your trade, 
you could not take; or to enable them to dispose of such arti- 
cles as we forced upon them, and, for which, without some 
degree of liberty, they could not pay. Hence all your specific 
and detailed enumerations; hence the innumerable checks and 
counterchecks ; hence that infinite variety of paper chains by 
which you bind together this complicated system of the colo- 
nies. I'his principle of commercial monopoly runs through no 
less than twenty-nine acts of parliament, from the year 1660 
to the unfortunate period of 1764."* 

The celebrated navigation act of 12 Car. II. not only pre- 
scribed in what vessels, and to what places, the goods of the 
i:olonies might be exported, but it limited one of their internal 
rights ; it prescribed what persons might act as merchants or 
factors, in the colonies. Three years afterwards, the Parlia- 
iment passed another bill, " to maintain," as they expressed 
themselves, " a greater correspondence and kindness between 
^e colonies and England; to keep them in a firmer depend- 
ence on it; to make the kingdom a staple, not only of the 
<:ommodities of the plantations, but also of the commodities 
of other countries for supplying them." This act (15 Car. 
ii. c. 7.) directed accordingly, that no European goods should 
be imported into the plantations, but such as should be shipped 
in England, and proceed directly on board English or planta- 
tion ships,, &c. The penalty was forfeiture of the goods and 
vessel; one-third to the king, one to the governor of the plan- 
tation, if the seizure were made there, and one^third to the in- 
former. And to facilitate the recovery of the penalties, the 
informer had his option of suing either in the king's courts, 
where the offence was committed, or in any court of record in 
England. 

Many of the articles which the colonies were compelled to 
buy of the mother country, could have been procured at a 
much cheaper rate elsewhere. She could charge her manu- 
factures with what imposts she pleased, and the burden fell 
ultimately upon the American consumer. It was stated to her 
ministers, by the agents of the colonies, that from the extra- 
ordinary demand in America, for her fabrics, she reaped an 
advantage of at least twenty per cent, in the price, beyond 

* Speech on American taxation. 



I COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

ar I. what the articles could be purchased for at foreign markets. 
The forced accumulation of American produce in her ports, 
reduced its price, by which she gained, on what she consumed, 
exactly in proportion to the loss of the colonists. The profit 
accruing to her from the portion re-exported, was obviously 
considerable. Taking off, as the colonies did in the latter 
years of their dependence, two millions annually of her manu- 
factures, and depositing with her, compulsorily, produce nearly 
to the same amount, it must be sufficiently clear, when the 
other circumstances just stated, are kept in view, that they 
paid an enormous indirect tax, independently of the charges 
to which they were liable, as a consequence of her European 
quarrels. Happily their domestic governments, cast in the 
simplest mould, and unincumbered with pageantry or surplus- 
age of any kind, subjected them to no heavy expense. **■ All 
the different civil establishments in North America," said 
Adam Smith, " exclusive of those of Maryland and North Ca- 
rolina, did not, before their revolt, cost the inhabitants above 
^64,700 a year; an ever memorable example at how small an 
expense three millions of people may not only be governed, 
but well governed."* 

What has been said conveys an adequate idea of the situa- 
tion in which the North American colonies were placed as to 
trade, but I wish to offer something more in illustration of the 
precipitation and levity, with which their interests, and the 
true interests of the mother country at the same time, were 
sacrificed, under the influence of an undistinguishing selfish- 
ness. I may quote as of perfect accuracy, — since no British 
Writer ventured to contradict them, — the following statements 
which Franklin published in London, in 1768. 

" They (the colonies,) reflected how lightly the interest of 
all America had been estimated here, when the interests of a 
few of the inhabitants of Great Britain happened to have the 
smallest competition with it. That the whole American 
people was forbidden tlie advantage of a direct importation of 
wine, oil, and fruit, from Portugal; but must take them loaded 
with all the expense of a voyage, one thousand leagues round 
about, being to be landed first in England, to be re-shipped 
for America; expenses, amounting in war time at least to 
thirty pounds per cent, more than otherwise they would have 



• W. of N. c. vii. b. Ir. It bespeaks an extraordinary share of political 
virtue in the colonists, to have resisted, as they did, during so long and- 
close a connexion, the example of the mother country, on the score of pub- 
lic expenditure and aristocratical distinctions. 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. 

been charged with; and all this merely, that a few Portugal SECXfl'i 
merchants in London may gain a commission on, those goods 
passing through their hands. 

" On a slight complaint of a few merchants trading with 
Virginia, nine colonies were restrained from making paper 
money, become absolutely necessary to their internal com- 
merce, from the constant remittance of their gold and silver 
to Britain. But not only the interest of a particular body of 
merchants^ but the interest of any small body of British trades- 
men or artificers, has been found to outweigh that of all the 
king's subjects in the colonies. 

" Iron is to be found every where in America, and beaver 
are the natural produce of that country : hats and nails and steel 
are wanted there as well as here. It is of no importance to 
the common welfare of the empire, whether a subject of the 
king gets his living by making hats on this or on that side of the 
water. Yet the hatters of England have prevailed to obtain an 
act in their own favour, restraining that manufacture in Ame- 
rica, in order to oblige the Americans to send their beaver to 
England to be manufactured; and purchase back the hats, 
loaded with the charges of a double transportation. In the same 
manner have a few nail-makers, and still a smaller body of 
steel-makers, (perhaps there are not half a dozen of these in 
England,) prevailed totally to forbid, by an act of parliament, 
the erecting of slitting mills, or steel furnaces in America; 
that the Americans may be obliged to take all their nails for 
their buildings, and steel for their tools, from these artificers, 
under the same disadvantages," &c. 

7. I may be permitted, before I leave this topic of com- 
mercial obligation, to advance to a more recent period. If a 
British statesman could not, after the American war, say abso- 
lutely, as Chatham had done before its occurrence — "Ame- 
rica is the fountain of our wealth, the nerve of our strength, 
the basis of our power," he might, however, safely ascribe no 
inconsiderable share of the continued prosperity of the British 
isles, to the commercial intercourse which was re-established 
with her, and to her increase in wealth and population. Her 
vast consumption of British manufactures, her abundant pro- 
duction of the raw materials, cotton particularly,* her imports 



• In 1791, the first parcel of cotton of American growth, was exported 

from the United States. Calculated on the average of the six yeai*s, from 

1806 to 1811, there was annually imported into Great Britain, from the 

United States, 34,568,487 pounds, and in 1811, 46,872,452 pounds. In 1755, 

Vol. I.— X 



I 

; COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

f 

viT L from the East Indies, her traffic with the West, the difFusion. 

v-^*-' through her means, of the British commodities of every de- 
scription over the continent of Europe, gave her, in her inde- 
pendent state, an aspect nearly approaching to that imder 
which Chatham saw her in the colonial. A distinguished 
member of the British parliament, Mr. Alexander Baring, ex- 
amined fully in 1808, with the advantages of practical know- 
ledge and much general commercial learning, the question of 
her increased utility, and pronounced that, upon the whole, 
she had, in her independent situation, to a greater degree than 
could have been expected from any other, been the means of 
augmenting the British resources^ in the zt>ar with the conti- 
nental powers — that she contributed in the highest degree pos'- 
iible^ all the henejits xvhich one nation could derive from the ex-' 
istence of another^ or that a mother country could receive from 
that of the best regulated colony.* The same enquirer as- 
certained, that three-fourths of the money proceeding from 
the consumption of the produce of the soil of America, in all 
parts of the world, were paid to Great Britain for her manu- 
factures. He developed other benefits, the reality of which 
did -not admit of dispute, and found it unpardonable " that 
his countrymen should entertain a jealousy of the prosperity 
and wealth American independence had produced, which not 
only served to circulate the produce of their industry, where :l 
they could not carry it themselves, but by increasing the means i 
of America, augmented in the same proportion her consump- 1 
tion of that produce, at a time when the loss of their former i 
customers, by the persecutions of France, rendered it mostlj| 
valuable." 

It will be enough, for the present, in addition to these re-i 
marks, to sL*',e the leading facts in the history of our indepen- 
dent trade with the British empire, as they are exhibited in the: 
valuable works of Pitkin and Seybert. 

The amount of goods imported into the United States fromi 
England in the year 1784, must have been about eighteen." 
millions of dollars, and in 1 785, about twelve millions ; mak-< 
ing, in those two years, thirty millions of dollars; while the; 



the cotton manufacture, in England, was ranked " among the humblest ofi 
the domestic arts ;" the products of this branch were then almost entirely; 
for home consumption ; in 1797, it took the lead of all the other manufac-^| 
tures in Great Britain, and in 1809, gave employment to 800,000 persons,! 
and its annual value was estimated at 30,000,000^ or 132,000,000 of doUara.i 
— Seybert. 
* Examination of the Orders in Council, &c. 



( 



OF GREAT BRITAIJS. ijl 

exports of the United States to England, were only between SEC1|; 
eight and nine millions. 

On the average of the six years, posterior to the war of our 
revolution, ending with 1789, the merchandise annually im- 
ported into Great Britain, from the United States, amounted 
to 908,636/. sterling ; and the importations into the United 
States, from Great Britain, on the same average, amounted 
annually to 2,119,837/. sterling; leaving an annual balance 
of 1,211,201/. s.jrling, or 5,329,284 dollars, in favour of 
Great Britain. In 1792, according to the estimate of the 
American Secretary of the Treasury, our exports to Great 
Britain and her dominions amounted to 9,363,416 dollars, and 
our imports to 15,285,428 dollars. Much the greater part of 
the imports was from Great Britain, exclusive of her depen- 
dencies. 

From sundry British documents it appears, that the United 
States, from 1793 to 1800, imported from Great Britain a 
greater amount of manufactures than were exported from 
Great Britain during the same period to all foreign Europe. 
In 1800, the United States received from Great Britain more 
]than one-fourth of the amount of the manufactured articles 
.exported by her to all parts of the world. 

, During the seven years from 1795 to 1801, both inclusive, 
the balance of trade with Great Britain and Ireland, and the 
dominions thereof, was uniformly against the United Sates, 
and in the aggregate amounted to 106,118,104 dollars, or 
15,159,748/. per annum. The balance in favour of Great 
Britain was only 70,116 dollars less than the apparent unfa- 
vourable balance produced by our trade with all parts of the 
world collectively taken. 

In 1800, the merchandise exported from Great Britain was 
worth 16/. 145. sterling, or 74.23 dollars per ton ; and that 
imported from Great Britain into the United States was worth 
54/. 4*. sterling, or 240.89 dollars per ton. 

In 1802, 1803, and 1804, there was annually imported into 
the United States from the British possessions in Europe, of 
merchandise paying duties ad valorem, and of other manufac- 
tured articles subject to specific duties, the aggregate of 
27,400,000 dollars: if we admit that one-fourth of this 
amount was re-exported, 20,550,000 dollars of the value 
thereof remained for the annual consumption of our popula- 
tion ; the profits on which were gained by Great Britain. It 
is generally calculated that raw materials gain seven fold by 
being manufactured. Such were our contributions in those 



COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIOISS 

years, for the advancement of the skill and industr}' of the 
British nation. 

On the average of the three years, 1802, 1803, and 1804^ 
the annual value of the merchandise exported from the United 
States to the dominions of Great Britain, amounted to 
18,665,777 dollars; and on the average of the same three 
years, the annual value of the merchandise imported into the 
United States from Great Britain amounted to 35,737,030 
dollars, leaving an annual balance of 17,071,253 dollars against 
the United States. 

The real value of British produce and manufacture export- 
ed to the United States, on an average of the years 1806 and 
1807, was 11,417,834/. sterling, or about 50,500,000 dollars ; 
making one quarter and one-third of all the exports of British 
produce and manufacture during those two years. By the Eng- 
lish accounts, the real value of cotton and woollen goods ex- 
ported to the United States from England, on an average of 
the same two years, was 8,984,886/. or about 39,500,000 dol- 
lars, as valued in England. 

In 1807, the amount of goods, paying duties ad valorem^ 
was nearly 39,000,000 of dollars; when we add the goods 
imported, in the same year, duty free, and those subject to 
specific duties, the whole amount imported from Great Britain 
in 1807, would not, it is believed, fall much short of 
50,000,000 of dollars. 

The aggregate value of the exports of every description to 
the United States from Great Britain, during the seven years^ 
from 1805 to 1811, amounted to 62,266,668/. sterling, or • 
annually to 36,470,471 dollars; their aggregate value to all 
parts of the world during the seven years amounted ta j 
376,977,160/. sterling, or annually to 220,800,498 dollars;: 
or, the United States received annually, of the merchandisfe 
of every description, exported to all parts of the world froni i! 
Great Britain, 16.51 per centum, or one-sixth of the aggregate 
value thereof. 

On the average of the seven years, from 1805 to 1811, the 
aggregate value of the British produce and manufactures an- 
nually exported from Great Britain to the United States, 
amounted to 35,441,367 dollars; and the annual value of the 
domestic produce of the United States exported to Great 
Britain, calculated on the same average, amounted to 
9,124,941 dollars; leaving an annual balance of 26,316,426 
dollars in favour of Great Britain. Or the annual value of 
the exports of every description from Great Britain to the Uni- 
ted States, on the average aforesaid, amounted to 36,470,471 



OP GREAT BRITAIN. f 

I 

(loUars; and the aggregate annual value of the exports oi SECT)' 
every description from the United States to Great Britain "^^^i'-i 
and her dependencies, her East India possessions excepted, 
amounted to 16,438,362 dollars ; leaving an annual balance of £ 
20,032,109 dollars in favour of Great Britain. 

On the return of peace between the two countries, in 1815, 
the importation of British goods was great beyond example. 
From the 1st of January to the 31st of December, 1815, the 
amount of goods paying duties ad valorem, imported from 
Great Britain and her dominions, was 71,400,599 dollars. 
Nearly the whole of this sum was made up from goods com- 
ing directly from Great Britain, consisting principally of 
woollens and cotton. The value of articles paying specific 
duties, from Great Britain and her dependencies, during the 
same period, (calcvdating their value at the place of importa- 
tion) was 11,470,586.80 dollars, making the whole amount no 
less than 82,871,185.80 dollars from Great Britain and the 
countries in her possession. 

During the six years from 1802-3 to 1807-8 inclusive, the 
United States exported in bulhon to India, only ^1,742,682 
sterling, less than had been exported during the same term, by 
the British East India Company, the officers of the Company's 
ships, and by the British private trade ; the amount which we 
exported, was more than two-thirds of that exported from 
Great Britain. 

It appears that the United States, during the six years from 
ISO^ to 1808, exported to the British East Indies, in mer- 
chandise, an aggregate of 2,589,589 dollars ; or annually, 
431,598 dollars. The treasure (specie) exported in the 
same term, in the aggregate, amounted to 17,626,275 dollars, 
or 2,937,712 dollars per annum. The importations into those 
settlements, consisting of money and merchandise, from the 
United States, amounted to 3,369,310 dollars per annum. 
During the six years aforesaid, there was exported, from the 
British East Indies, to the United States, merchandise, 
amounting to 18,63'3,426 dollars, or annually to 3,105,571 
dollars. The treasure exported as aforesaid, amounted in 
the aggregate to 69,500 dollars, or annuallj^to 11,583 dollars; 
leaving an annual balance in favour of India, of 2,662,390 
dollars. 

During the years 1804, 1805, and 1806, the United States 
supplied the British West India islands with more than nine- 
tenths of their flour, meal and bread, about two-thirds of their 
Indian com, oats, peas and beans, about one half of their beef 



) COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

RT I. and pork, more than one half of their dried fish, and nearly 
•^-"^ the whole of their live stock and lumber. 

The average quantity of staves and heading, sent to the 
British West Indies, in the years 1805, 1806, 1807, was 
17,614,000, being nearly one half of the quantity exported 
during these years. The quantity of boards and plank, for 
the same years, on an average was 40,000,000. In 1803, 
260,555, and in 1807, 251,706 barrels of flour were exported 
to these islands. 

Tiie value of flour, bread, and biscuit exported to the Bri- 
tish West Indies, on an average of the years 1802, 180J, 
1 804, was about 2,000,000 dollars ; of lumber of all kinds 
about 1,000,000; of beef, pork, bacon, and lard, about 
800,000 dollars ; and of Indian com, rye, and Indian meal, 
about 600,000. The quantity of rum imported, during the 
same period, was about 4,000,000 gallons annually, and was 
valued at about 2,500,000 dollars. The quantity imported, 
in the years 1805, 1806, and 1807, was about 4,614,000 gal- 
lons annually. 

The average amount of duties upon merchandise, annually 
imported into the United States from the British West India 
islands and North American colonial possessions, from 1802 
to 1816, excluding the period from the commencement of the 
restrictive system to the termination of the late war, exceeds 
2,000,000 dollars. The value of the merchandise upon which 
these duties accrued is supposed to be equal to 7,000,000 dol- 
lars per annum. The average annual amount of exports to the 
same places, principally of domestic production, up to 1817, 
excluding the time of the operation of the restrictive system, 
and the continuance of the war, have exceeded 6,500,000 dol- 
lars. In 1815, the amount of the duties on merchandise im- 
ported in American vessels from the British West India 
islands and North American colonial possessions, was, to the 
amount of duties imported in British vessels, as one to four i 
in 1816, as one to five and a half, or two to eleven. Taking 
the ratio of 1816, as the basis of calculation, and it is believed 
to afford the safest and most solid,' — as past experience shows 
a constant diminution of the amount of duties on goods im- 
ported in vessels of the United States — it is estimated, 
supposing the same proportion exists in the exports, that ( 
American vessels are used on the transportation annually of 
2,177,924 dollars worth of merchandise, and British vessels, 
of 1 1 ,322,076 dollars worth of the most bulky articles of com- 
merce, one half of which are of the growth, production or 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. ^| 

manufacture of the United States. This inequality in the ad- SECT)' 
vantages of this commerce, to the navigating interest of this '^^'^^i 
country, arises from the rigorous enforcement of the colonial 
system of Great Britain, as to the United States, while it is 
relaxed to all nations who arc friendly to the British empire 
.and her colonial possessions. 



\m 



SECTION Yl 



OF THE RELATIVE DISPOSITIONS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND 
AMERICA, FROM THE PEACE OF 1763. 

1. The oppression and losses which the colonies had en- 
dured ; the shackles imposed upon them ; the destitution to 
which they had been so long consigned ; the parsimony and 
unskilfulness with which aid was finally administered by the 
mother country ; the faint praise or the bitter sarcasm which 
attended their noblest exertions ; the despicable character and 
habitual malversation of their governors;* the immeasurable 
evils which they could trace to the indifference, incapacity, or 
corruption of British ministers ; the general complexion of 
the domestic government of Great Britain, so livid in the? 
contrast with their own, and so ghastly in the pictures of hef 
party writers ; all, were insufficient to stifle their affections} 
or shake their allegiance. In the season of their severest dis^ ■ 
tress from the incursions of the Indian and Canadian; at thel; 
height of their dissatisfaction with the restraining and dis**- 
franchising system of the mother country ; they did not turtf-i 
their eyes to France, who could have arrested the steps of I 
their savage invaders, and who would gladly have made any^ 
compromise, or concession of privileges, to attach them to her' 
empire. Franklin boasted with truth in 1768, " Scotland! i 
has had its rebellion; Ireland has had its rebellion; England 
its plots against the reigning family; but America is free fronv' 
this reproach." What is related of the Greek colonies, coul<J.' 
be more emphatically said of those of Great Britain — that.' 
they remembered the land of their fathers with filial respe<Jt*' 
and affection ; that they retained an invincible predilectioiiif 
for its laws and customs, for its religion and language ; tha1?i' 
they followed devotedly its fortunes, and exulted in its gloryl*! 
The peace of 1763 seemed to banish every chilling recollec-^' 
tion ; to heighten their complacency in the connexion with I 

* See note K. 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THE, &C. 

. . . . . . . . l''''l'i 

Great Britain and their admiration of the English constitution. SECT. ,■;,* 

They fondly thought the true and highest panegyric and tri- ^«.^-v-" ,^ 

umph of the American, to be comprised in the verses of the 

Poet, 

And English merit his, where meet combin'd 
Whate'er high fancy, sound judicious thought. 
An ample generous heart, undrooping soul. 
And firm, tenacious valour can bestow.* 

Testimony of a convincing nature superabounds with re- 
spect to these dispositions. Out of the mass, I will select 
that of the two men who, by their opportunities of know- 
ledge and soundness of judgment, were entitled, perhaps, to 
most weight in the question; Governor Pownal and Dr. Frank- 
lin. The first had been long in some of the highest offices 
which the crown could confer in America — governor and j 

conimander-in-chief of Massachusetts Bay — governor of ' 

South Carolina — lieutenant-governor of New-Jersey, &c. : the 
second gave the evidence which I shall quote from him, in 
1785, when he could have no interest in making a false or 
exaggerated statement. 

" I profess," said Pownal in 1 765, " an affection for 
the colonies, because having lived amongst their people in 
a private, as well as in a public character, I know them — 
I know that in their private social relations, there is not a 
more friendly, and in their political one, a more zealously 
loyal people, in all his majesty's dominions. When fairly 
and openly dealt with, there is not a people who has a truer 
sense of the necessarj- powers of government. They would 
sacrifice their dearest interests for the honour and prosperity 
of their mother country. I have a right to say this, because 
experience has given me a practical knowledge, and this im- 
pression, of them."f 

" The duty of a colony is, affection for the mother country : 
I here I may affirm, that in whatever form and temper this af- 
fection can lie in the human breast, in that form, by the deep- 
est and most permanent impression, it ever did lie in the breast 
of the American people. They have no other idea of this 
country than as their home; they have no other word by which 
to express it, and till of late, it has constantly been expressed 
by the name of home. That powerful affection, the love of 
our native country, which operates in every breast, operates 



* Thomson. 

t The Administration of the Colonies — Dedication t© George Grenville. 

Vol. I.— Y 



I DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

jtT I. in this people towards England, which they consider as thcit 
^--^^^ native country : nor is this a mere passive impression, a mere 
opinion in speculation — it has been wrought up in them to a 
vigilant and active zeal for the service of this country."* 

" The true loyalists," said Franklin, " were the people of 
America against whom the royalists of England acted. No 
people were ever known more truly loyal, and universally so, 
to their sovereigns : the protestant succession in the House of 
Hanover was their idol. Not a Jacobite was to be found from 
one end of the colonies to the other. They were affectionate 
to the people of England, zealous and forward to assist in her 
wars, by voluntary contributions of men and money, even be- 
yond their proportion." 

In my first and second sections, I have quoted the language 
of several of the British politicians, imputing to the colonies, 
even in their infancy, the design of acquiring independence. 
As it was my purpose there, merely to set the apprehensions of 
the mother country, and the energetic character of our Ameri- 
can forefathers, in a more striking relief, I did not formally 
deny the truth of the charge; and it appeared to me that if it 
were admitted to be true, the circumstances under which the 
settlers repaired to this continent, and consolidated their for- 
tunes, would furnish them with an obvious and a complete justi- 
fication. But it is far from being well-founded ; and some ob- 
servations on the subject, in this place, may not be deemed su- 
perfluous. The excessive jealousy of power, and the conscious- • 
ness of tyi-annical rule, raised the suspicion in the administra- • 
tion of the Stuarts and of the Roundheads ; the selfish and do- • 
mineering spirit of the nation at large rendered her susceptible, 
at every moment, of lively alarm for her monopoly and sove- 
reignty. Government and people were, from these causes, in 
the language of Mr. Burke, "too acute; perpetually full of 
distrusts, conjectures and divinations, formed in defiance of 
facts and experience." Whenever a natural or charteredt 
right, a local privilege and immunity, was pleaded against> 
the encroachments of their arrogant will or oppressive laws,; 
they at once fancied and proclaimed, that their whole autho- 
rity was denied, and that the litigant provinces either medi- 
tated, or had committed rebellion. They could not perceive 
that the very assertion of a privilege implied an acknowi 
ledgment of their supremacy; that the eagerness of the co- 
lonists to obtain charters from the crown, and their anxietyt 
to preserve unimpaired those which they obtained, — their 

* Debate on Disturbances in America, 1770. 

■ 



PEACE OF 17G3. 

claims to the liberties of Englishmen as defined and pledged SECO't'r 
by the British constitution; their perpetual appeals to the 
authority of Parliament ; amounted to a constant renovation of 
fealty, and indicated any other drift than that of separation. 
When, after the peace of 1763, the scheme of American tax- 
ation and servitude was matured, and the determination fixed 
to persist in it at all hazards, its immediate authors and abet- 
tors, in order to render it more acceptable to the nation, 
exerted themselves particularly to spread the impression, that 
New England had constantly aimed at independence ; that 
" the Americans had been obstinate, undutiful and ungovern- 
able from the very beginning." This was the text taken by 
the orators in Parliament, and the writers out of doors, on the 
ministerial side, with a view to the conclusion, that all con- 
cession or gentleness to the intractable provincials would be 
futile ; that, "■ they never could be brought to their duty and 
the true subordinate relation, till reduced to an unconditional, 
effectual submission.""* 

To convict New England of treasonable dispositions in all 
stages of her existence, is, palpably, the main object of Chal- 
mers, in his Annals; and it would seem, that he, or those in 
whose service he writes, did not deem it advisable to relin- 
quish the argument, as late as the year 1814. In the preface 
to a work published under his name in that year, and entitled 
" Opinions of Eminent Lawyers, on various points of English 
Jurisprudence, chiefly concerning the Colonies, &c." I find 
the following passage : " None of the statesmen of 1 766 or 
1768, nor those of the preceding nor subsequent times, had 
any suspicion that there lay among the documents, in the 
Board of Trade and Patent Office, the most satisfactory 
proofs from the epoch of the Revolution in 1668, throughout 
every reign, and during every administration, of the settled 
I purpose of the revolted colonies, to acquire direct indepen- 
1 ^dence: the design had long been entertained of acquiring po- 
sitive sovereignty." 

We have seen what these proofs are, in the extracts which 
K ^I have made from his Annals. They amount to no more than 
I i-what was extant in the public history of the colonies ; and 
may be resolved into* a determined assertion, on their part, of 
. -fundamental liberties, and into acts of sheer necessity. In 
\ '.illustrating their political intrepidit)', I have cited many in- 
stances of an inflexible tenacity as to natural and chartered 
rights, but none of a rebellious or seditious temper. Evidence 



Earl Talbot, House of Lords, 1776, 



! DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

BT I. is not wanting that they would never have submitted to the 
■v-^ deprivation ot their privileges ; but none exists even of a wish 
for independence, while those privileges could be preserved. 
If we fix our attention, for a moment, on the situation of the 
first settlers, particularly the northern, we shall perceive that, 
to exist at ail in order and safety ; to constitute a regular and 
stable commonwealth J it was indispensable for them to trans- 
cend the letter of the royal patents. They had no alternative 
in the first instance, but to erect judicatories, and establish re- 
presentative assemblies, in reference to their domestic weal ; 
and, when no hope of protection from abroad could be in- 
dulged, to confederate for external defence. 

We may wonder that Dr. Robertson, acknowledging the 
dereliction of the New England colonies during the civil com- 
motions in the mother country, and the extremity of their peril 
from the plots of the Indians, should yet censoriously re- 
present their league of 1643, — the only means of their preser- 
vation, — as " a transaction in which they seem to have con- 
sidered themselves as independent societies, possessing all the 
rights of sovereignty, and free from the control of any supe- 
rior power."* Thrown as they were into a wilderness, rather 
as reprobates to be sacrificed, than as subjects to be defended; 
committed to the exigencies and chances of a distant settle- 
ment, and pressed with the highest degree of danger at the 
season when all was confusion and dissention in the mother 
country; they must have fallen into anarchy themselves, had 
they waited to consult her rulers respecting their domestic 
arrangements; or have perished by the tomahawk of the 
savage, had they looked to her for a system of defence, and 
delayed to combine their strength and sagacity, so as to assure 
a common exertion, whenever it might be wanted, whether for 
military or civil objects. The institutions and prosperity that 
arose out of this compulsory exercise of discretion, under such 
untoward circumstances, excite in me anew, the surprise and 
admiration which I have more than once expressed. 

The measure of coining money, taken by Massachusetts 
during the civil wars, gave a handle to her enemies in England, 
which was used eagerly, from the period of the Restoration, to 
the apparition militant of Chalmers and his numerous associates 
in the same crusade. That writer lays, as we have seen, 
the greatest stress upon its sufficiency, as evidence of the 
early disloyalty of New England ; and Dr. Robertson found it 
*' a usurpation ;" an unambiguous indication of " the aspiring 



Vol. iv. History of America. 



PEACE Of 1763. 1 

spirit prevalent among the people of Massachusetts."* I SECT 
cannot refrain from otfering, in answer to these invidious sug- ^^^v-' 
gestions, a quotation from a paper on the subject published in 
the English Monthly Magazine for January, 1799, It com- 
prises an anecdote which gives the proper air to the orthodox 
historian's umbrage " at the tree stampt upon the Boston coin 
as an apt symbol of its progressive vigour." 

" It seems to be the opinion of Dr. Robertson, that the 
people of Massachusetts assumed this ' peculiar prerogative of 
sovereignty' in defiance of, or at least, in opposition to, the 
royal authority. But it ought to be particularly noticed, th^t 
the first coinage was made in the year 1652. Instead, there- 
fore, of ascribing this measure to the ' aspiring spirit of the 
people of Massachusetts,' the Doctor might just as well have 
said, that the colonists being nearly deserted, at this time, by 
the rulers at home, on account of the civil wars, and the varir- 
ous forms of government which afterwards followed, were 
obliged to coin money from absolute necessity. The follow- 
ing extract from the Memoirs of the late truly patriotic Tho- 
mas Hollis, will prove this to have been the principal, if not 
the only cause, and consequently point out the mistake which 
Dr. Robertson has inadvertently fallen into." 

" Sir Thomas Temple, brother to Sir William Temple, re- 
sided several years in New England during the interregnum. 
After the Restoration, when he returned to England, the king 
sent for him, and discoursed with him on the statfe of affairs in 
the Massachusetts, and discovered great warmth against that 
colony. Among other things, he said they had invaded his 
prerogative by coining- money. Sir Thomas, who was a real 
friend to the colony, told his majesty, that the colonists had but 
little acquaintance with law, and that they thought it no 
•crime to make money for their own use. In the course of the 
conversation, Sir Thomas took some of the money out of his 
pocket, and presented it to the king. On one side of the coin 
was a pine tree, of that kind which is thick and bushy at the 
top. Charles asked what tree that was ? Sir Thomas inform- 
ed him it was the royal oak, which preserved his majesty's 
life. This account of the matter brought the king into good 
humour, and disposed him to hear what Sir Thomas had to 
say in their favour, calling them a '•parcel of honest dogs,"* " 

*' The jocular turn which Sir Thomas gave to the story, 
■ was evidently calculated to amuse the monarch in his own 



* Vol. iv. History of America. 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

wa5% and had the desired effect, in disposing him to hear with 
' good humour, that just defence of the colonies which Sir Tho- 
mas was so well qualified to make. We find he pleaded, that 
the colonists thought it no crime to make money for their own 
use ; at a time too, when the confusions in the mother coun- 
try prevented them from receiving those occasional supplies 
of coin, which were absolutely necessary for common circula- 
tion. Such an uncommon exigency required an uncommon 
expedient ; and this will account for the proceedings of the 
people of Massachusetts in a more rational manner, than Dr. 
Robertson has done." 

By the act of 14 Geo. II. c. 37, the Americans were re- 
strained from creating banks ; by that of 24 Geo. II. c. 53, 
the governors and assemblies of the respective American pro- 
vinces were prohibited from making " any act, order, resolu- 
tion, or vote, whereby paper bills or bills of credit, shall be 
created or issued, under any pretence whatever ; or from pro- 
tracting or postponing the times limited, or the provisions 
made, for calling in such as were then actually issued and sub- 
sisting." After the peace of 1763, most of the colonies were 
reduced, in consequence of the enforcement of these and other 
regulations of a like purport, to a situation worse than that of 
Massachusetts in 1672. It is thus stated by Macpherson in 
his Annals. " Their foreign trade was almost entirely ruined 
by the rigorous execution of the new orders against smuggling, , 
and the collection of the duties in hai'd silver, which soon ( 
drained the country of any little real money circulating in it. 1 
And, as if government had intended to prevent the colonists j 
from having even the shadow of money, another act was passed, | 
in a few days after that for the new duties, declaring that no 
paper bills, to be thenceforth issued, should be made a legal 
tender in payment, and enjoining those in circulation to bei 
sunk (that is, paid off in hard money) at the limited time." 

Had the colonies — some of which were driven to the expe- 
dient of barter, — possessed bullion, and proceeded to coin it 
on this emergencj- , it would not have been difficult for any li- 
beral enquirer to decide whether the proceeding was to be in-, 
terpreted into " an indication of an aspiring spirit," or into a 
mere and natural effort for temporary relief from an oppressive 
privation. I find it the more unpardonable in Dr. Robert- 
son to have mistaken or misrepresented the views of the colo- 
nists, since he has himself furnished an explanation of much 
of their apparent indocility in the following paragraph : "In 
writing the history of the English settlements in America, it is 



PEACE OF 1763. 1 

necessary to trace the progress of the restraining laws with SECT 
accuracy, as in every subsequent transaction, we may observe ^-^^v, 
a perpetual exertion on the part of the mother country, to en-' 
force and extend them ; and on the part of the colonies, en- 
deavours no less unremitting to elude or to obstruct their 
operation." 
i The inveterate design of the colonies to become indepen- 
I jdent, continued to be a leading topic in the British parliament, 
notwithstanding the evidence furnished in their conduct on the 
repeal of the stamp act in 1 766.* We have a specimen of the 
manner in which the charge was supported, in the argument 
of Sir Richard Sutton, who said in the House of Commons, 
on the 22d April, 1774, " If you ask an American — who is his 
master, he will tell you he has none ; nor any governor but 
Jesus Christ!" Lord Mansfield was quite sure that the Ame- 
ricans had meditated a state of independency, particularly 
since the peace of Paris, and upon this ground chiefly, he 
rested his celebrated declaration in the House of Lords, " if 
Ave do not kill the Americans, the Americans will kill us." In 
the quotation which I have made from one of his speeches on 
the same point, Davenant is brought forward as having 
I ♦* foreseen that America would endeavour to form herself into 
! a separate and independent state, whenever she found herself 
1 of sufficient strength to contend with the mother country." 
' The learned judge did not, however, deal fairly with Dave- 
: .nant. This great political teacher — ^by far the ablest of his 
j time, and whose treatises, according to his editor, Sir Charles 
'i Whitworth, " may be properly called the foundation of the 
: political establishment of England" — had delivered, in his 
, Discourse on the Plantation Trade, opinions respecting the 
1 colonies, which Lord Mansfield would have been very unwil- 
I ling to produce in their real shape. The following, written in 
; 1698, are of this number, and will compensate for the space 
i they may occupy in these pages, by their historical value. 
if " Generally speaking, our colonies while they have English 
I blood in their veins, and have relations in England, and while 



* " When the news of the repeal of the stamp act reached America," 
says Macpherson, " it was, notwithstanding' the disagreeable nature of the 
concomitant act, received with universal demonstrations of joy. Sub- 
scriptions were made for erecting statues to Mr. Pitt, who had exerted 
himself for the repeal ; and resolutions were made to prepare new dresses 
made of British manufactures for celebrating- the 4th of June, the birth day of 
their most gracinut sovereign, and to give their homespun clothes to the 
poor," &c. 



: DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

IT I. they can get by trading with us, the stronger and greater they 
'"^ grow, the more this crown and kingdom will get by them ; and 
nothing but such an arbitrary power as shall make them despe- 
rate^ can bring them to rebeW 

" Whil^ we keep a strict eye upon their conduct, and 
chiefly watch their growth in shipping of strength and for 
war, whatever other increase they make, either in wealth or 
in number of inhabitants, cannot be turned against us, and 
can never be detrimental to this nation. While we are strong 
and they weak at sea, they may be compelled to obey the laws 
of England, and not to trade directly and upon their own ac- 
count with other countries. I do not think the greatness these 
colonies may arrive at in a natural course, and in the progress 
of time can be dangerous to England. To build ships in the- 
way of trade or for their own defence, can administer no true 
cause of jealousy." 

*' It is true, if in New England, or in other parts there, they 
should pretend to set up manufactures, and to clothe as well 
as feed their neighbours, their nearness and low price would 
give them such advantages over this nation, as might prove of 
pernicious consequence ; but this fear seems very remote, be- 
cause new inhabitants, especially in a large extent of country, 
find their account better in rearing cattle, tilling the earth, 
clearing it of woods, making fences, and by erecting necessary 
buildings, than in setting up of manufactures, which is the 
last work of a people settled three or four hundred years, 
growing numerous and wanting territory." 

" When we contemplate the great increase and improve- 
ments which have been made in New England, Carolina, and 
Pennsylvania, we cannot but think it injustice not to say, that 
a large share of this general good to those parts is owing to 
the education of the planters^ which, if not entirely virtuous, 
has, at least, a show^ of virtue." 

*' And to the sobriety and temperate way of living, prac- 
tised by the dissenters retired to America, we may justly at- 
tribute the increase they have made there of inhabitants, 
which is beyond the usual proportion to be any where else ob- 
served." 

" Had it not been for provinces begun and carried on by 
people of sobriety, the English empire abroad would be much 
weaker than it is at present." 

" If ever any thing great or good be done for our English 
colonies, industry must have its due recompense, and that 
cannot be, without encouragement to it, which, perhaps, is 
only to be brought about by confirming their liber ties. '''' 



PEACE OF 17G3. I 

•' And as great care should be taken in this respect, so, SEOJ 
livithout doubt, it is advisable, that no little emulations, or pri- 
vate interests of neighbour governors, nor that the petitions of 
hungry courtiers at home, should prevail to discourage those 
particular colonies, who in a few years have raised themselves 
by their own charge, prudence, and industry, to the wealth 
and greatness they are now arrived at, without expense to 
the crown : Upon which account, any innovations or breach 
of their original charters (besides that it seems a breach of 
the public faith) may, peradventure, not tend to the king's 
profit." 

" We shall not pretend to determixre whether the people in 
the Plantations have a right to all the privileges of English 
subjects; but the contrary notion is, perhaps, too much en- 
tertained and practised in places which happen not to be dis- 
tant from St. Stepheti^s Chapel. Upon which account it will, 
peradventure, be a great security and encouragement to these 
industrious people, if a declaratory law wei'e made, that 
Englishmen have right to all the laws of England, while they 
remain in countries subject to the dominion of this king- 
dom." 

^ 2. On the side of the British government, the bias and im- 
pressions taken after the epoch of 1 763, were altogether, and 
by an almost incredible perversion of heart and of judgment, 
the reverse of those which I have ascribed to the colonies. It 
>vas to be expected that the exertions and sufferings of the 
latter during the war, and the value of the results tb Great 
Britain, would have warmed the feelings, and relaxed the 
gripe, of any ministry or parliament, however greedy of reve- 
nue, or tenacious of dominion. The British nation had ac- 
quired, by the war, lands more than equal in value to the 
amount of all the expense she had incurred in America from 
its first settlement ; and she saw opened to her new avenues of 
a most beneficial commerce. No share was sought or reaped by 
the colonies, in the millions of acres which they had helped 
to conquer; they seemed to desire no more than the loosening 
of their fetters so far, as to enable them to recover from their 
wounds. 

But, to allow them an interval of ease entered not into the 
imagination or heart of their task-masters. The Lords of tKe 
Admiralty issued forthwith, instructions to the commanders on 
the American station, to enforce all those acts of trade to 
which I have adverted, in the most rigid manner. " The 
ministry," says Gordon, " obliged all sea-ofRcers stationed on 

Vol. I.— Z 



I DISPOSITIONS FliOM THE 

r I- the American coasts, to act in the capacity of the meanest re- 
■""^^ venue officers, making them submit to the usual custom-house 
oaths and regulations for that purpose. This proved a great 
grievance to the American merchants and traders. Many il- 
legal seizures were made; no redress could be had but from 
Britain. Besides, the American trade with the Spaniards, by 
Avhich the British manufactures were vended in return, for 
gold and silver in coin or bullion, cochineal, &c, as occasion 
served, was almost instantly destroyed by the armed ships un- 
der the new regulations."* Immediately after the ratification 
of the definitive treaty, the intentions of the government to 
quarter ten thousand troops in America, and to support them 
at the expense of the colonies, were authentically announced. 
Mr. Grenville avowed it, in the House of Commons, to be 
his purpose, to raise the money for the support of those troops, 
by a duty on the foreign sugar and molasses imported into 
America, and by stamps on all papers legal and mercantile. 
In 1764, Parliament passed an act imposing duties on the 
two first articles; and to secure its execution, the penalties 
for the breach of it, or of any other act relating to the trade 
and revenues of the British colonies, were made recoverable in 
any court of admiralty in the colony where the offence should 
be committed, or — at the election of the informer or prosecu- 
tor — in any court of vice-admiralty, which might be appointed 
by the crown in any part of America. Thus the trial by jury 
might be withheld, and the defendant called to support his 
claim to property seized, at distances which would make the 
expense of the pursuit more than the value of the prize. 
Moreover, the act provided that he could recover neither 
cost nor damages, if the judge certified that there was probable 
cause of seizure. 

I do not know of any moral phenomenon which history 
offers, more hateful — than that those who were entrusted in 
Great Britain with the supreme administration, should not only 
have proved utterly insensible to the services and distresses 
of the colonies, but have at once resolved to take adv^antagc 
of the expulsion of her rival from the American continent, effect- 
ed, in great part, through their vigorous assistance — and of the 
mighty increase and complete disengagement of the national 
strength, produced by the same generous co-operation — t© 
enforce in all its rigour the whole digest of commercial sub- 
jection; to plunge them into what Mr. Burke so justly describ- 
ed as " a perfect uncompensated slavery, by joining together 

* Vol. i. p. 207. 



PEACE OF 176S. ' 

the reslruints ot an universal internal and external monopoly, SECT: 
with an universal internal and external taxation." 

There seems to be now but one voice throughout the world, 
respecting the expedients employed to establish this cumulative 
despotism — the revenue-acts, stamp-acts, restraining and 
starving acts, Boston port acts, acts for disfranchising legisla- 
tures, for quartering soldiers in private houses, dragging men 
to England for trial, &c. English writers of every party- 
denomination, finding that the verdict of Europe was given 
unanimously and irreversibly, against this headlong career of in- 
justice and folly, have concurred in passing upon it, themselves, 
the severest sentence of reprobation. They tell us without 
hesitation that a scheme of new modelling the colonial govern- 
ment, so as to increase the power and patronage of the crown, 
and enable ministers to enrich their relations and dependents, 
was the cause of the war, and of the loss of America. 
They adduce these as the prominent features of the hopeful 
scheme :— - 

First, to raise a revenue in America by act of parliament, 
to be applied to support an army there ; to pay a large salary 
to the governors, another to the lieutenant governors, salaries 
to the judges of the law and admiralty ; and thus to render the 
whole government, executive and judicial, entirely indepen- 
dent of the people, and wholly dependent on the minister. 
Second, to make a new division of the colonies, to reduce the 
number of them by making the small ones more extensive, to 
make them all royal governments, with a peerage in each, &c. 

Mr. Burke gave to parliament, in his unanswerable speech 
on American taxation, a full account of the dawn and progress 
of the new plan of colonial administration. His relation stands 
as a monument of the genius of that rule, under which the co- 
lonies, by their own admirable energies, and a train of provi- 
dential dispensations, had grown to a strength, and preserved a 
spirit, too firm to be broken by its utmost pressure, when all 
other barriers to its natural action were removed. The fol- 
lowing is a part of the testimony of Burke : 

" At the period immediately on the close of the war of 1 756, 
a scheme of government new in many things seemed to have 
been adopted. I saw, or thought I saw, several symptoms of 
a great change, whilst I sat in your gallery, a good while be- 
fore I had the honour of a seat in this house. At that period 
the necessity was established of keeping up no less than twenty 
new regiments, with twenty colonels capable of seats in this 
house. This scheme was adopted with very general applause 
from all sides, at the very time that, by your conquests in 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

America, yovu- danger from foreign attempts in that part of the 
world was much lessened, or indeed rather quite over. When 
this huge increase of military establishment was resolved on, 
a revenue was to be found to support so great a burthen. 
Country gentlemen, the great patrons of economy, and the 
great resisters of a standing armed force, would not have en- 
tered with much alacrity into the vote for so large and so ex- 
pensive an army, if they had been very sure that they were to 
continue to pay for it. But hopes of another kind were held 
out to them; and, in particular, I well remember, that Mr. 
Townshend, in a brilliant harangue on this subject, did dazzle 
them, by playing before their eyes the image of a revenue to 
be raised in America." 

The conduct of the colonies in resisting this scheme did not 
want for advocates in the parliament ; and we may claim for 
it particularly, the unqualified sanction of Camden and Chat- 
ham, the most enlightened and conscientious among the British 
statesmen of that day. " We have been," said the first, " the 
original aggressors in this business ; if we obstinately persist, 
we are fairly answerable for all the consequences. When we 
contend that we aim only to defend and enforce our own rights, , 
I positively deny it. I contend that America has been driven, . 
by cruel necessity, to defend her rights from the united attacks 
of violence, oppression, and injustice. I contend that America i 
has been indisputably aggrieved. Perhaps, as a domineering' ■ 
Englishnan^ wishing to enjoy the ideal benefit of such a claim' 
of taxation, I might urge it with earnestness, and endeavour to : 
carry my point; but if, on the other hand, I resided in America, 
that I felt, or was to feel, the effects of such manifest injustice, 
I certainly should resist the attempt with that degree of 
ardour which so daring a violation of what should be held 
dearer than life itself, ought to enkindle in the breast of every 
freeman." 

" Pursuing the ideas of a native American, or a person re- 
siding in that country, what must be the sense they feel of the 
repeated injuries that have for a succession of years past been 
heaped on them ? To have their propert}% under the idea oi 
asserting a right to tax them, voted away by one act of parlia- 
ment, and their charters, under an idea of the supreme autho- 
rity of the British legislature, swept away by another vote of 
parliament. Thus depriving them, or rather claiming a right 
to dispose of every shilling they are worth, without one of 
them being represented by the persons pretending to exercise 
this right; and thus stripping them of their natural rights, 
growing out of the constitution, confirmed by charter, and! 



PEACE OF 17t)S. ill 

recognized by every branch of the legislature, without exami- SECT ,,', 
nation, or even without hearing."* 

" The Americans," said Chatham, " are a wise, industrious, 
and prudent people. I'hey possess too much good sense, and 
too much spirit, ever to submit to hold their properties on so 
precarious and disgraceful a tenure. They see us, besides, 
immersed in luxury, dissipation, venality, and corruption ; they 
perceive, that, even if they were willing to contribute, to what 
purposes their contributions would be applied ; to nothing but 
the extinction of public and private virtue there, as has already 
been the case here."f 

An American finds not only instruction, but a gratification 
such as is commonly enjoyed, in looking back upon a hideous 
evil from which you have lastingly escaped, when he retraces 
the portraits drawn by near observers, whose title to credit is 
bevond dispute, of the cabinets and men to whom the English 
monarch and nation committed the liberties and fortunes of the 
colonies. Let us see how they are described by three states- 
men of different political views and connexions, and of the 
-.fullest and most intimate experience in the ministerial govern- 
,.ment of the kingdom. In the debate of the House of Lords 
,(<of Feb. 1st, 1775, Lord Mansfield said — " I have seen much 
of courts, parliaments and cabinets, and have been a frequent 
witness to the means used to acquire popularity, and the base 
>; and mean purposes to Avhich that popularity has been after- 
/..wards employed. I have been in cabinets where the great 
ntstruggle has not been to advance the public interest; not by 
^i coalition and mutual assistance to strengthen the hands of 
\-. government; but by cabals, jealously and mutual distrust, to 
thwart each others designs, and to circum\ent each other, in 
ord^r to obtain power and pre-eminence." 

Lord Chatham, in concluding the defence of his plan of 
Conciliation at the sitting of the Lords of the 1st February, 
1775, aposti-ophized the ministers of the day thus : 

" Yet when I consider the whole case as it lies before me, 
rr«l am not much astonished; I am not surprised that men who 
f- hate liberty should detest those that prize it; or that those who 
I want virtue themselves, should endeavour to persecute those 
who possess it. Were I disposed to carry tills theme to the 
extent that truth would fully bear me out in, I could demon- 
strate that the whole of your political conduct has been one 
continued series of weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance. 



* Debate in the I/oiisc of Lords, Nov. 15, 1775. 
i Ibid. 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

'T I. futility, negligence, blundering, and the most notorious servili- 
^"^ ty, incapacity and corruption. On reconsideration, I must 
allow you one merit, a strict attention to your own interests ; 
in that view, you appear sound statesmen and able politicians. 
You well know if the present measure (of reconciliation with 
the colonies) should prevail, that you must instantly lose your 
places. I doubt much whether you will be able to keep them 
on any terms : but sure I am, that such are your well known 
characters and abilities, any plan of reconciliation, however 
moderate, wise, and feasible, must fail in your hands. Such, 
then, being your precarious situation, who can wonder that 
you should put a negative on any measure which must annihi- 
late your power, deprive you of your emoluments, and at once 
reduce you to that state of insignificance, for which God and 
nature designed you." 

Earlier — in the debate respecting the disorders in America, 
1770, — Lord Shelburne held this language in the same house : 
" My lords, — I scarcely remember a period in history, an- 
cient or modern, where the ministers of a state, however dead 
to the feelings of justice, were so lost to the sentiments of 
shame, that they gloried to be detested by every honest indivi- 
dual of their country. This pinnacle of profligacy was reserved 
for the present ministers of Great Britain, who have adopted 
the principle of the Roman tyrant as far as they were able ; 
and if our head? were beyond their power, have at least cut off 
all our liberties with a blow." 

3. As the fellowship of enterprise, suffering, and object, 
during the war of 1756, between the colonies and the mother 
country, the copious effusion of their blood in the same mili- 
tary operations, and their joint triumph, failed to inspire her 
even with the sympathies natural to the most common alliance, 
the more intimate relations with them into which that war 
brought her; the opportunities which it afforded for a thorough 
observation of their character and situation ; had no effect in 
curing her profound ignorance on these points. It appears, 
indeed, the less extraordinary, that the metropolitan councils 
should have remained in this state, when it is noted, that most 
of the royal governors in America seemed, with all the advan- 
tages of their situation, to have no clearer insight. Indig- 
nation might relax into mirth, when we read the language 
which the governor of Massachusetts addressed to his princi- 
pals in 1 774. " The colonists talk of fixing a plan of govern- 
ment of their own ; and it is someivhat surprising^ that so many 
■n the other provinces interest themselves so much in the behalf 



PEACE OF 1763. r 

wf this of Massachusetts. I find they have some warm friends SEC r. 
in New York and Philadelphia; and I learn by an officer who ^-•''v-* 
left Carolina, the latter end of August, that the /Jfiz/^/t' of Charles- 
ton are as mad as they are hercJ'^^ 

If any British statesman could be expected to vmderstand 
thoroughly the nature and condition of the Americans, it was 
Chatham ; j^et, he is reported to have spoken in parliament in 
1776, in this strain: 

** There were not wanting some, when I had the honour to 
serve his majesty, to propose to me to burn my fingers with 
an American stamp-act. With the enemy at their back, with 
our ba3^onets at their breasts, in the day of their disti-ess, per- 
haps the Americans would have submitted to the imposition ; 
but it would have been taking an ungenerous and unjust ad- 
vantage. A gi'eat deal has been said without doors, of the 
power, of the strength of America. It is a topic that ought to 
be cautiously meddled with. In a good cause, on a sound 
bottom, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. 
I know the valour of your troops. I know the skill of your 
officers. There is not a coynpany of foot that has served in 
America^ out ofxvhich you may not pick a 7nan oj sufficient 
knoxvledge and experience^ to make a governor of a colony there T 

In their first projects for subverting the liberties of Anie- * " 
rica ; in every step which they took as they prosecuted their 
aim ; in all that they uttered, the ministry betrayed that they 
|were entire strangers to her spirit and resources. Indeed, the 
almost universal ignorance of the British on these points, ren- 
idered them altogether unfit to hold dominion over the colonies, 
and constituted, in itself, a sufficient reason why the connexion 
should be dissolved. We may judge of the delusions, com- 
mon to rulers and people, by the following specimens drawn 
from the parliamentary' debates. 

" M}' Lords," said the Lord Chancellor Northington to the 
Upper House, in 1 766,f " the colonies are become too big to 
be governed by the laws they at first set out with. They have 
therefore run into confusion, and it will be the policy of thi§ 
:ountry to form a plan of laws for them. If they withdraw 
I lUegiance, you must withdraw protection; and then the little 
ytate of Genoa^ or the kingkdom^ or rather republic of Sweden^ 
;nay soon overrun them." 

" I have the best reasons for thinking," said the prime mi- 



• Letter from the Hon. Gov. Gage to the Earl of D-irtmoiuh, daterl .l5o.^ 
on, 20th Sept. 1774. 
t Debute on disttirbances in America. 



piSPUSinOiNa FROM THE 

nister, Lord North, in 1770,* " that the American associations, 
not to buy British goods, must be speedily self-destroyed ; be- 
cause the Americans, to distress us, xvill not injure themselves ; 
because they are already weary of giving an advanced price 
for commodities they are obliged to purchase; and because, 
after all the hardships which they say their commerce groans 
under, it is still obviously their interest not to commence ma- 
nufactures." 

The eloquent Glover, in the speech at the bar of the Com- 
mons, M'hich I have already cited, taught that body a more ac- 
curate lesson, while he took an instructive review of the suc- 
cessive delusions of the nation. 

" I would have accompanied others more speculative through 
their several gradations of hope, still disappointed, and still 
reviving, but for one observation, which I have generally kept 
concealed, but will soon reveal to you. But for this observa- 
tion I might have concurred with the public belief, that the 
capital of a province, now declared in rebellion, would ha\e 
submitted on the landing of a few regiments; this failing, that 
other provinces from ancient jealously and disgust would not 
have interfered, and would have rather sought their own ad- 
vantage out of that town's disti"ess ; this failing, that they never 
would have proceeded to the length of constituting a certain 
inauspicious assembly among themselves ; this failing, that the 
members of such assembly would have disagreed, and not 
framed a single resolution. This last hope having proved abor- 
tive, a new one is popularly adopted, that the first intelligence 
of enforcing measures, at least the bare commencement of I] 
their execution will tame the most refractory spirits. I will 
here state the grounds of this, and all the preceding hopes; 
afterwards with your indulgence the ground of my original 
and continued doubts. .i 

" Our trading nation naturally assumed, that the present i 
contention would be with traders in America. The stock oi \ 
a trader, whether his own, or in part, and often the greatest 
part, a property of others confiding in him, is personal, lodged 
in a magazine, and exposed in seasons of commotion to in- 
stantaneous devastation. The circumstance of such property, 
the considerations suggested by common prudence, by the 
sense of common justice to those who have given a generous 
credit, rarely make room for that intrepidity, which meets 
force with force. Hence I admit, that the mere traffickers 
would have submitted at first, and will now, Avhenever they 



Debate on American tea dutv. 






PEACE OF 1763. I' 

dare. The reason, why they have not dared, is the founda- SECT.: 
tion of my doubts. v«^-v^'^ 

" I am speaking to an enlightened assembly, conversant 
with their own annals. In those ages, the reverse of com- 
mercial, when your ancestors filled the ranks of men at arms, 
and composed the cavalry of England, of whom did the in- 
fantry consist ? A race unknown to other kingdoms, and in 
the present opulence of traffic, almost extinct in this, the yeo- 
manry of England; an order of men, possessing paternal in- 
heritance, cultivated under their own care, enough to pre- 
serve independence, and cherish the generous sentiments at- 
tendant on that condition ; without superfluity for idleness, or 
effeminate indulgence. 

" Of such doth North America consist. The race is re- 
vived there in greater numbers, and in a greater proportion to 
the rest of the inhabitants ; and in such the power of that con- 
tinent resides. These keep the traffickers in awe. These, 
many hundred thousands in irultitude, with enthusiasm in 
their hearts, with the petition, the bill of rights, and the acts 
of settlement, silent and obsolete in some places, but vocifer- 
ous and fresh, as newly born, among them ; these, hot with 
the blood of their progenitors, the enthusiastic scourges at one 
period, and the revolutional expellers, of tyranny, at another ; 
these, unpractised in frivolous dissipation and ruinous profu- 
sion^ standing armed on the spot ; possessing, delivered down 
from their fathers, a property not moveable, nor exposed to 
total destruction, therefore maintainable, and exciting all the 
spirit and vigour of defence ; these, under such circumstances 
of number, animation and manners, their lawyers and clergy 
blowing the trumpet, are we to encounter with a handful of 
ftien sent three thousand miles over the ocean to seek such ad- 
versaries on their own paternal ground. — But these will not 
^ght^ says the general voice of Great Britain^'' &c, 

. It was long before the British government and the majority" 

of the British people, could be persuaded that America would 

,have the resolution to look the mother country in the face, and 

■steadily resist its immense power. They supposed a success- 

|ful resistance impossible, arguing from considerations natural 

; enough in the frame of mind, and habits of action, almost 

I universal thi-oughout Europe. America consisted, to their eye, 

' I only of parts of a nation, and those the meanest in quality, 

because the least artificial in the modification, and tinselled 

I in the drapery ; she had neither standing armies, disciplined 

forces, fleets nor fortresses ; she wanted great and sitiall arms, 

flints, ammunition ; she laboured under a scarcitv of coin ; she 

Vol. I.— A a 



» DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

RT. I. would have teri'ible difficulty in procuring clothing, salt, medr- 
v-^ cinesj jealousies rankled between the several provinces, and 
must quickly break their precipitate league, &c. When the 
revolution took a consistent character, and generated resources, 
its impetus was ascribed, by these sagacious reasoners, to any 
other cause, than the heroic spirit which informed it, and 
which easily surmounted all common obstacles. They were 
never touched by Avhat they could not discern, and their infa- 
tuation continued therefore nearly the same in all points. In 
1776y their commissioner on the coast of America, Lord 
Howe, was instructed to offer pardon upon submission ; and 
the letters which passed between this herald of clemency and 
Dr. Franklin, as one of the committee of conference deputed 
by Congress, were published the same year, in London, to 
show the insolence of the insurgents in refusing- the offer of 
pardon upon submission. 

The following extract from a speech of Lord George Ger- 
main, of May, iTT"?, in the House of Commons, will furnish 
still more striking evidence of the manner in which the minis- 
try indulged their own spleen, and fed the delusion of their 
followers. His Lordship said — " As to the campaign, he 
thought he had the greatest reason to expect success from the 
army of General Howe being in good order, and more numer- 
ous from recruits than in the last campaign ; while that of the 
rebels was in much worse order, and less numerous : that the 
fleet was also reinforced with some ships of the line, which 
were wanting last year; that he thought himself farther found- 
ed in his expectation from the minds of the people turning ; 
from their experiencing the misery of anarchy, confusion, and 
despotism, instead of the happiness and security they enjoyed 
under the legal government of this country ; that these emo- 
tions had operated so strongly in their minds, that very many 
deserters had left the rebel army, and come into General 
Howe with their arms; many hundreds were coming in every 
day: that he had formed his opinion from the circumstances of'^ 
the Congress having given up the government^ confessing them- 
selves unequal to it^ and created Mr. Washington dictator of 
America; these circumstances, he thought, promised divisions 
among them. That another circumstance, which every day 
proved of yet greater importance, was, their beiyig disappoint- 
ed i}i their expectations of assistance from. France. They had 
been buoyed up with that hope, and made to believe, that a 
superior French fleet would be seen riding on their coasts ; in 
all which they now felt themselves deceived, and resented it 
accordingly. That they had met with the same disappoint- 



PEACE OF 1763. I 

ment from Spain ; not that he asserted they had not received SECT, 
underhand assistance from both, in officers, &c. but what they ^^'>^, 
were promised was open avowed assistance. Yet, Sir, added 
his lordship, for the protection of France they would pay 
largely; they have offered largely; they have, by their pre- 
tended ambassadors, actually offered to the French court all our 
West India islands J There is liberality, Sir ! There is love of 
freedom, to consign so readily to French dominion and des- 
potism, the whole West Indies !"* 

It was about the date of this happy effusion, — only a few 
months before the sui'render of Burgoyne, — that Lord Stor- 
mont, tile British ambassador at the court of Versailles, being 
addressed by Messrs. Franklin and Deane, commissioners of 
the American Congress at the same court, on the subject of 
an exchange of prisoners, answered in these words — " The 
King's ambassador receives no applications from rebels unless 
they come to implore his Majesty^s clemency /" 

4. Besides the consideration of the colossal power of the 
mother country, and the many acknowledged obstacles to suc- 
cessful resistance inherent in the condition and habits of the 
colonies, other encouragements were wanted by the ministe- 
rial majority in parliament, and still more by the body of the 
people, for perseverance in the system of tyrannical coercion. 
In defiance of the fresh experience of the war of '56 ; of 
the whole current of the colonial history ; of positive evidence 
of every description ; the moral and intellectual character of 
the colonists was made to furnish those encouragements. They 
were at once cowards, knaves, and dolts, rebellious and inso- 
lent, whom it would be easy to subdue, and just to bring un- 
der a rigorous discipline. The most was made on every oc- 
casion, of these pretended traits and dispositions, for the sup- 
port of the ministerial policy, the gi'atification of spleen, or the 
[display of wit, both in and out of parliament. What passed 
in that body ought not to be forgotten ; for, it affords a portent- 
ous and instructive example of national arrogance trampling 
on all public decorum, all experience and verisimilitude ; all 
self-interest and self-respect ; all j ustice and gratitude ; all the 
nost sacred regards, and endearing affinities. 

With respect to the House of Commons, a single extract 
Torn the Reports of its debates, may suffice. The tenor of this 
extract will strike every reader who is familiar with the tone, 
iHid favourite topics, of the late English publications concern- 

* See Note L, 



» DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

EiT I. ing America. Colonel Grant said — " he had served in Ame- 
v-*^ rica ; knew the Americans very well ; was certain they would 
not fight; they would never dare to face an English army ; and 
that they did not possess any of the qualifications necessary to 
make a good soldier; he repeated viany of their common-place 
expressions; ridiculed their enthusiasm in religion^ and dreri) a 
disagreeable picture of their vianners and xvays of living.''''^ 

The picture sketched by the gallant colonel is said to have 
produced much mirth in the House, and obtained implicit cre- 
dit from the majority. The chronicles of the time relate that 
a suspicion of its accuracy did not arise, until some months 
after, when news was received in England of the battle of 
Breed's Hill ; and of the expedition to Canada, which, as it is 
related by Brougham in his Colonial Policy, furnishes an ex- 
cellent comment on the speech of Grant. 

" While the most sanguine friends of American indepen- 
dence scarcely ventured to hope that the colonists would be 
able to maintain their ground against the forces of the mother 
country, they astonished the world, by commencing offensive 
operations. The very first campaign of that unhappy war, was 
signalized by a successful expedition of the revolters against 
the stations of the British forces on the frontiers of Canada ; 
and the gates of that province were thus thrown open to the 
most formidable invasion, which threatened the total conquest 
of the country before the end of the same year. The gallant 
leaders to whom those operations were entrusted, actually re- 
duced the whole of Upper Canada, and were only foiled in 
their attempts on Quebec, by the ill choice of the season, owing 
chiefly to the divisions of opinion that constantly attend the 
offensive measures of governments newly formed upon a popu- 
, lar model ; the union of the besieged in defence of their large 
property, which they were taught to believe would be exposed 
to the pkmder of the rebels ; and the extensive powers wisely 
confided by the British government to General Carleton — 
powers formerly unknown in any of the colonies, and utterly 
iiTConsistent with a government bearing the faintest resem- 
blance to a popular form. Thus had the infant republic of 
America, immediately at the commencement of separate ope- 
rations, and above half a year previous to the formal declara- 
tion of independence, almost succeeded in the conquest of a 



* Debate of Feb. 2d, 1775. This Colonel Gi-ant was the same that com- 
manded the detachment whose defeat near Fort Du Quesne I have noticed 
in my 4th Section, and which was preserved from utter destruction by the 
bravery of the Virginia militia. 



PEACE OF 1763. It 

British colony, strong by its natural position, by the vigour of SECT ' 
its internal administi-ation, by the experience of the veteran 
troops who defended it, and by the skill of the gallant officer 
who commanded these forces ; while the only advantages of 
the assailants consisted in the romantic valour of their leaders, 
the enthusiasm of men fighting in their own cause, and the 
vigorous councils of an independent community."* 

In the House of Lords, the empyrean of British legislation 
and senatorial dignity, " that great body of his majesty's brave 
and faithful subjects with which his American provinces hap- 
pily abounded,"! was still more roughly handled tlian in St. 
Stephen's Chapel. " A little before I left London, in 1775," 
says Franklin,! " being at the House of Lords when a debate 
in which Lord Camden was to speak, and who, indeed, spoke 
admirably on American affairs, I was much disgusted from 
the ministerial side, by many base reflections on American 
courage, religion, understanding, &c. in \vhich we were treat- 
ed with the utmost contempt, as the lowest of mankind, and 
almost of a different species from the English of Britain ; but 
particularly the American honesty was abused by some of the 
lords, who asserted that we were all knaves, and wanted only 
by this dispute to avoid paying our debts : that if we had any 
sense of equity or justice, we should offer payment of the 
tea," &c. 

The parliamentary history furnishes copious proof of this 
statement of Franklm. Such specimens abound as the follow- 
ing: " Earl Talbot said, the noble Earl who spoke last has 
certainly hit off one leading feature of the Americans. His 
lordship tells you that even in the midst of their zeal for free- 
dom and independence, they were not able to conquer their 
natural propensity tojraudandconcealmfnt^^'' &c. &c. 

" The duke of Chandos rose, and moved an address of 
thanks. His grace began Avith stating the many public and 
private, virtues of the sovereign, and the obstinacy^ baseness^ 
tmd ingratitude^ of his rebellious subjects in America,''^ &c. &c. 
-. The extent to which this obloquy was carried, on one point, 
is evidenced, even by a protest of the minority, who adduced 
it as one of their motives to dissent, in the following remark- 
■^le language : " We do not apprehend that the topic so much 
insisted upon by a lord high in office, namely, the coivardice oj 
his Majesty''s American subjects^ to have any weight in itself, 
or be at all agreeable to the dignity of sentiment which ought 



* BookIL Sect. i. f Videpag-e 121. i;. Memoirs, vol. i. 



J DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

RT I. to characterize this House. This is to call for resistance, 
'v^'^ and to provoke rebellion by the most powerful of all motives 
which can act upon men of any degree of spirit and sensi- 
bility." 

The lord high in office alluded to in the protest, was the 
Earl of Sandwich, who presided over the admiralty, and pos- 
sessed a considerable share of influence in the cabinet. His 
speech is a precious sample, of the general strain of the mother 
country at this period, respecting her transatlantic offspring. 
It is a model which has hardly been surpassed in the multitude 
of similar effusions at our expense, to which almost every year 
since its date has given birth. Its pleasantry is inimitable; 
and the truth of the details, as well as the delicacy of the tone, 
will be more strongly felt, on a reference to what I have nar- 
rated, in regard to the conduct of the provincials at Louisbourg, 
and the efficacy of their conquest. 

" The Earl of Sandwich said — suppose the colonies do 
abound in men, what does that signify? They are raw, undis- 
ciplined, cowardly men. I wish, instead of 40, or 50,000 
of these brave fellows, they would produce in the field at least 
200,000. The more the better: the easier would be the con- 
quest; if they did not run away they would starve themselves 
into compliance with our measures. I will tell your lordships . 
an anecdote that happened at the siege of Louisbourg. Sir 
Peter Wai-ren told me, that in order to try the courage of the 
Americans, he ordered that a great number of them should be 
placed in the front of the army; the Americans pretended at 
first to be very much elated at this mark of distinction, and 
boasted what mighty feats they would do upon the scene of 
action ; however, when the moment came to put in execution 
this boasted courage, behold, every one of them ran from the 
front to the rear of the army, with as much expedition as their 
feet could carry them, and threatened to go off entirely, if the 
commander offered to make them a shield to protect the Bri- 
tish soldiers at the expenseof their blood; they did not under- 
stand such usage. Sir Peter finding what egregious coxvarda 
they were, and knowing of what importance such numbers 
would be to intimidate the French by their appearance, told 
these American heroes^ that his orders had been misunderstood, 
that he always intended to keep them in the rear of the army 
to make the great push; that it was the custom of generals to 
preserve the best troops to the last; that this was also the 
Roman custom, and as the Americans resembled the Romans 
in every thing, particularly in courage and a love to their 
country, he should make no scruple of following the Roman 



PEACE OF 1763. 1 

custom, and he made no doubt but the modei*n Romans would SECT. 
show acts of bravery equal to any in ancient Rome. By such ^»^^>^ 
discourses as these, said Sir Peter Warren, I made shift to 
keep them with us, though I took care they should be pushed 
forward in no dangerous conflict. Now, I can tell the noble 
Lord, that this is exactly the situation of all the heroes in North 
America; they are all Romans. And are those men to fright 
us from the post of honour? Believe me, my Lords, the very 
sound of a cannon would carry them off, in Sir Peter's words, 
as fast as their feet could carry them."* 

Although a majority of the noble lords chuckled at the wag- 
gery of the British commodore, and the vis comica of the head 
of the Admiralty, there was, as the above-mentioned protest 
teaches, a small minority of the assembly, who neither relished 
the joke, nor comprehended the manliness of this course of 
argument in favour of the proscription of a whole people. A 
generous indignation at the language held in the House of 
Commons, roused several of the members of that body, to stem 
the torrent of opprobrium, and I should commit an injustice, 
if I did not repeat something of what was uttered on the 
American side. 

" Col. Barre said — ^the Americans had been called cowards, 
but the very regiment of foot which behaved so gallantly at 
Bunkers-hill, (an engagement that smacked more of defeat 
than victory) the very corps that broke the whole French co- 
lumn and threw them in such disorder at the siege of Quebec, 
was three parts composed of these cowards. "f Governor 
Johnstone paid the following tribute : " To a mind that loves to 
contemplate the glorious spirit of freedom, no spectacle can be 
more affecting than the action at Bunkers-hill. To see an ir- 
regular peasantry commanded by a physician ; inferior in num- 
bers; opposed by every circumstance of cannon and bombs 
that could terrify timid minds, calmly waiting the attack of 
the gallant Howe, leading on the best troops in the world, with 
an excellent train of artillery, and twice repulsing those very 
troops who had often chased the battalions of France, and at 
last retiring for want of ammunition, but in so respectable a 
manner that they were not even pursued — Who can reflect on 
such scenes and not adore the constitution of government 
which could breed such men!"^ 

The pusillanimity of the provincials served as an enliven- 
ing topic for the circles of fashion, and the clubs of the coffee 

* Debate, March 15th, 1775. t Ibid.—See Note M. 

t Debate, October 26th, 1775. 



I DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

RT 1. houses, as well as for the august body of parliament. Accord- 
-v-"^-' mg to Franklin,* " every man in England, in the year 1767, 
' seemed to consider himself as a piece of a sovereign over 
America; seemed to jostle himself into the throne with the 
king, and talked of our subjects in the colonies.^'' In 1775, 
almost every man in England thought himself able to conquer 
America, and talked, in the words of the ministry, of the pali- 
node which the dastardh' Americans would sing, at the very 
appearance of a single British regiment. The English news- 
papers of the day bear me out in this representation ; and 
Franklin has left on record, in one of his lettersf to an Eng- 
lish correspondent, a piece of concurrent testimony sufficiently 
pointed. It is to be inserted here, not merely for the sake of 
the historical fact, but for the concluding observations, which I 
wish to be taken as a commentary, upon all that I have quoted 
on this head from the British orators. 

*' The word general puts me in mind of a general, your 
general Clarke, who had the folly to say, in my hearing-, at i 
Sir John Pringle's, that with a thousand iiritish grenadiers, he 
would undertake to go from one end of America to the otheT^, 
and geld all the males, partly by force and partly by a little 
coaxing. It is plain he took us for a species of animals very 
little superior to brutes. The parliament too believed thie 
stories of another foolish general, I forget his name, that the 
Yankees never felt bold. 

" Yankey was understood to be a sort of Yahoo, and th^ 
parliament did not think that the petitions of such creatures 
were fit to be received and read in so wise an assembly. What 
was the consequence of this monstrous pride and insolence? 
You first sent small armies to subdue us, believing them more 
than sufficient, but soon found yourselves obliged to seiid 
greater ; these, whenever they ventured to penetrate our couif 
try beyond the protection of their ships, Mere either repulsed 
and obliged to scamper out, or were surrounded, beaten, and 
taken prisoners. An American planter, Avho had never sedt i 
Europe, was chosen by us to command our troops, and con* 
tinued during the whole war. This man sent home to yoti^ i 
one after another, five of your best generals bafRed, their headS 
bare of laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their em^ 
ployers. Your contempt of our understandings, in compari- 
son with your own, appeared to be not much better founded' 
than that of our courage, if we may judge by this circunt-; 

* Letter to Lord Karnes, London, April llUi, 1767. 
t August 19th, 1784. 



PEACE OF 1763. 1' 

stance, that in whatever court of Europe a Yankey negociator SECT, 
appeared, the wise British minister was routed, put in a pas- 
sion, picked a quarrel with your friends, and was sent home 
with a flee in his ear." 

5. The extreme of acrimony, nay ferociousness, into which 
the temper of the ministerial party towards the colonies had 
run in England, before their declaration of independence, and 
even within three or four years after the peace of Paris, is 
scarcely conceivable on a review of the many circumstances 
which tended, with such weight of reason and force of pa- 
thos, to produce the opposite state of mind. We have seen 
that, from a mere calculation of interest, or from party-aims, 
the restoration of Canada was proposed, at the very moment 
of the consummation of the common efforts of the mother coun- 
try and the colonies in the struggle with France. When the co- 
lonies had barely ventured to denounce the stamp-act, the idea 
of a more direct cheeky of vindictive visitation by similar means, 
was admitted and inculcated. Franklin, writing from London 
in 1768, tells his correspondent, " I can assure you, that here 
are not wanting people, not now in the ministry, but that soon 
may be, who, if they were ministers, would take no step to 
prevent an Indian Avar in the colonies ; being of opinion, which 
they express openly, that it would be a very good thing, in the 
first place, to chastise the colonists for their undutifulness, and 
then to make them sensible of the necessity of protection by 
; the troops of this country." 

We read in the history of Gordon, where he treats of the 
■discussions in parliament respecting the repeal of the stamp- 
, act, that " the Dukes of York and Cumberland, the Lords of 
{the Bed Chamber, and the officers of the royal household, 
were for carrying fire and sword to America, rather than re- 
ical the obnoxious act; and that the bench of bishops joined 
jthem."* The unnatural i-ancour which dictated this fell policy, 
could readily tolerate that of starving the provinces of New 
England, by cutting them off from the fishery on their own 
coast. In extenuation of this measure, and in answer to the 
objections of the Opposition in parliament, who, with the mi- 
nistry, believed it might produce famine, the Solicitor General 
of Scotland, a ministerial oracle, said, " that though prevent- 
ed from fishing in the sea, the New Englanders had fish in 
their rivers, to which this act did not prevent them from re- 
sorting; and that, though he understood their country was not 



* Vol. H. p. 139. 

Vol. I.~B b 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 



fit for grain, yet they had a grain of their own, Indian corn, 
071 xvhich they might subsist full as rvell as they deserved.^''* 

When such language was held on a question of this nature, 
it is not matter of surprise that, in the same year, the majority 
in parliament listened, not merely without shuddering, but 
with coraplacency, to the significative intimation already no- 
ticed, of one of its members. Governor Lyttleton, respecting 
the seduction of the American negroes. 

The consoling image of a servile war in the southern colo- 
nies, had even become familiar to the meditations of the politi- 
cians, and was industriously presented to the nation. " If the 
obstinacy of the Americans continues without actual hostili- 
ties," said Dr. Johnson, in his Taxation no Tyranny, " it may 
perhaps be mollijiedhy turning out the soldiers to free quarters, 
forbidding any personal cruelty or hurt. It has been proposed, , 
that the slaves should be set free, an act which surely the lovers 
of liberty cannot but commend. If they are furnished with fire- 
arms, for defence^ and utensils for husbandry, and settled in 
some simple form of government within the country, they may 
be more grateful and honest than their masters."! 

The Governors of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Florida, in 
carrying this plan into effect, forgot the utensils of husbandry, 
but not the fire-arms ; and offered these to the negroes, to be 
used not strictly for personal defence, but in defence of theirs 
sovereign ! The ministry upheld, in the House of Commons, 
Lord Dunmore's celebrated proclamation of the 7th Nov. 
1 775^ of which the following passage is hardly yet eff"aced 
from the memory of the Virginians. " I do declare all indent- 
ed servants, negroes or others appertaining to rebels, free, that 
are able and willing to bear arms, they joining his majesty's 
troops as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this 
colony to a proper sense of their duty to his majesty'^ s crowHi 
and dignity.^'' 

Mr. Burke, referring to this subject in his speech on the 
Conciliation with America, made some I'emarks, the last of 
which may be particularly recommended to the attention of 



* Debate of the Commons, March 6th, 1775. 

f " That tliis pamphlet (Taxation no Tyranny) was written at the desire 
of those who were then in power, I have no doubt ; and, indeed, Johnson 
owned to me, that it had been revised and curtailed by some of them. He 
told me, that they had struck out one passag-e, which w.is to this effect 
" That the colonists could with no solidity arg-ue from their not having beei 
taxed while in their infancy, that they should not now be taxed. We do not 
put a calf into the plough ; we wait till he is an ox " He said, " They struck 
it out either critically as too ludicrous, or politically as too exasperating.' 
{Boswell.) 



PEACE OF 176^. 1 

those British critics, who so often discharge upon us, on account SECT, 
of our slave-holding, " the splendid bile of their virtuous indig- ^"^'-v- 
nation." 

" With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and 
the southern colonies, it has been proposed, I know, to reduce 
it, by declaring a general enfranchisement of their slaves. This 
project has had its advocates and panegyrists. But I could 
never argue myself into an opinion of it. Slaves as these un- 
fortunate black people are, and dull as all men are from slavery, 
must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that 
very nation^ -which has sold them to their present 7nasters ?' 
From that nation^ one of xvhose causes of quarrel rvith those 
masters^ is their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman 
traffic .?" 

The manifesto and proclamation which the British commis- 
sionersybr restoring peace ^ addressed to the Americans in Oc- 
tober 1778, denounced a war of havoc, in terms that occasion- 
ed a motion in parliament for solemn reprobation. In the 
course of the animated debate on this motion,* the American 
Congress of that era, — now classed by universal assent, with 
the wisest and most virtuous assemblies of the kind which are 
mentioned in history, — was the particular object of proscrip- 
tion and opprobrium, with members of both parties. Mr. 
Porvys said, " if the Congress could be picked up, man by 
man, and put to the most exemplary punishment, they should 
all fall unpitied by him, because they really deserved every 
severity that could be inflicted on them." 

Governor Johnstone] " approved of the proclamation 
throughout, and condemned the American Congress in the 
strongest terms. He thought no quarter ought to be shown to 
them ; and if the infernals could be let loose against them, he 
should approve of the measure. He said, the proclamation cer- 
tainly did mean a zvar of desolation ; it meant nothing else : 
it could mean nothing else; and if he had been on the spot 
when it was issued, he would have signed it." 

Mr. Attorney General Wedderburn said, " that the procla- 
mation was as sober, conscientious, and humane a piece of good 
writing as he ever saw: he explained away the phrase of the 
' extremes of war,' and asserted that nothing could be done but 
what was necessary to self preservation, which he avowed was 
a sufficient plea for all the horrors of war." 

• Dec. 4th, 1778. 

f His appointment by the ministry as one of the commissioners to America, 
explains the contrariety between his tone at this period, and that which he 
adopted at the beginning' of the war. 



t 

DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

Mr. Macdonald " understood the part of the proclamation 
' which gave such an alarm, to be nothing more than a warning 
to the rebels not to expect that lenity in future, which we had 
shown to them during the course of the war, when we looked 
upon them as our fellow subjects, and whom we wished to 
reclaim by the viost singular mildness and indulgence. By 
their alliance with France, the natural enemy of our country, 
they had forfeited all right to clemency ; they were therefore in 
future to be treated no longer as subjects of Great Britain, but 
as appendages to the French monarchy, whose interests they 
had preferred to the British : parental fondness should no lon- 
ger sway the breasts of our rulers; war should assume a dif- 
ferent form from that in which it had been conducted from the 
beginning of the rebellion; and the Americans might prepare 
to be treated, not, indeed, like beasts, or savages, but like 
common enemies, for whom we no longer retained any trace 
of affection, which their unnatural alliance had absolutely 
effaced, but which had subsisted longer than it could have 
prudently been expected, after the many unprecedented pro* 
vocations they had given Great Britain to take off the ties of 
affection at a much more early period. War now they should 
have in its full vigour; not such an one as they had been all 
along accustomed to, and which had been so tempered luith 
peace^ that it scarcely deserved the name of war. This he 
conceived to be the meaning of the words in the proclamation; 
he hoped it would have the desired effect on the rebels ; he 
flattered himself that it was a happy omen to see the friends 
of America so alarmed at it; and their terrors he would deem 
the forerunners of that general consternation in America, which 
would make the deluded colonists open their eyes before it 
should be too late, and return to their allegiance to the mother 
country." 

6. There is still a sort of incredulity of the imagination when 
we reflect, how soon the parent state resorted to the expedient 
of annoyance — the last which, in the order of penal visitation, 
would present itself to the fiercest hate against the most de- 
testable object, or to the most just revenge for the deepest and 
bitterest injury. It will be at once understood that I mean 
the employment of the savages as auxiliaries; an enormity of 
rancour and desperate ambition, which drew down those 
blasting thunders from the genius of Chatham, that seem to be 
still heard, when we look at the faint image of them conveyed 
in the parliamentary history. Two years after the commence- 
ment of the revolution, had this prophetic and generous spirit 



PEACE OF 1763. I 

\(i tell his countrymen, in an agony of shame and gnef, " It is SECTl 
not a wild and lawless banditti whom we oppose :— the resist- ^^^~>^ 
«nce of America is the struggle of free and virtuous patriots." 
The cruelty and degeneracy of associating to the British arms 
the tomahawk and scalping-knife — of " trafficking at the 
shambles of every German despot," for the purpose of crush- 
ing that resistance; of butchering a people chiefly descended 
from British loins, and from whose labours Britain had reap- 
ed so rich a harvest of power and glory, might well produce 
the " sanctified phrenzy" to which he was wrought. But he 
recollected, besides, how long that people had struggled with 
" the merciless Indian" for the possession of the soil, on 
which they had reared English communities and institutions ; 
and he felt, in seeing the same inveterate enemy led back 
upon them, by the country for whose benefit nearly as much 
as their own, they had fought so bi'avely, and bled so pro- 
fusely, the peculiar hardship and bitterness of their lot, and 
the unpiralleled barbarity and callousness of England. There 
was enough to rouse all the energies of his humanity and his 
patriotism, in the item which the treasury accounts presented, 
of ^160,000 sterling, for the purchase of warlike accoutre- 
ments for the savages; — in that phrase, as ridiculous as it war? 
ferocious, of Bourgoyne's speech to the congress of Indians n^ 
the river Bouquet (June 21st, 1777) — " Go forth in the might 
of your valour and your cause ; strike at the common enemies 
of Great Britain and America, disturbers of public order, peace, 
and happiness; destroyers of commerce; parricides of the 
state;" — and in the proclamation of governor Tonyn of East 
Florida, oifering a reward for every American scalp delivered 
to persons appointed to receive them. 

It is an aggravation of guilt that the utmost efforts of the 
highest degree of human eloquence, seconded by the most ma- 
ture wisdom and approved patriotism, were wholly without 
effect. Throughout the war, the mother country displayed as 
haughty and ruthless a spirit, as if she were in fact engaged in 
crushing " a wild and lawless banditti," or resisting an here- 
ditary enemy and rival, alien and odious to her by everv prin- 
ciple of estrangement and aversion.* The Americans whom 
she made prisoners in the contest, persisting, as they did, in 
rejecting all temptations to enter into her service against their 
country, so far from conciliating kindness by their magnani- 
mity, experienced a more rigorous treatment than the French 
and Spaniards in the same situation. After many hundreds 

* See Note M. 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

of them had languished for several years m a cruel captivity, 
they petitioned the goverment in vain for an equal allowance 
of provision. The earl of Shelburne affirmed in the House of 
Lords, in the debate of December 5th, 1777, that " the French 
officers taken prisoners going to America, had been inhumanly 
treated ; but that the American prisoners in England were treat- 
ed with unprecedented barbarity." 

The American Board of War had a conference with Mr. 
Boudinot, the commissary general of prisoners, at York town, 
on the 21st of December, 1777, and after having carefully ex- 
amined the evidence produced by hiAi, agreed upon the fol- 
lowing report : " That there are about 900 privates, and 300 
officers prisoners in the city of New York, and about 500 
privates and 50 officers in Philadelphia: — That the privates 
in New York have been crowded all summer in sugar-houses, 
and the officers boarded on Long Island, except about 30, who 
have been confined in the provost guard, and in the most loath- 
some jails : — That since the beginning of October all these 
prisoners, both officers and privates, have been confined in 
prison ships, or the provost : — That the privates in Philadel- 
phia have been kept in two public jails, and the officers in the 
state house : — That, from the best evidence which the nature 
of the subject will admit of, the general allowance of prison- 
ers, at most does not exceed four ounces of meat and as much 
bread (often so damaged as not to be eatable) per day, and 
often much less, though the professed allowance is from eight 
to ten ounces : — That it has been a common practice with the 
enemify on a prisoner'' s being Jirst captured., to keep him three.^ 
foi(r.,jij' even Jive days ivithoiit a morsel of provisions of any 
Mnd^ and then to tempt him to enlist to save his life: — That 
there are numerous instances of prisoners of war perishing in 
all the agonies of hunger from their severe treatment : — That 
being generally stript of what clothes they have when taken, 
they have suffered greatly for the want thereof, during their 
confinement." 

Mr. Burke, in one of his publications of the year 1776, sar- 
castically remarks, " it is undoubtedly some comfort for our 
disappointments and burdens, to insult the few provincial offi- 
cers we take, by throwing them with common men into a gaol, 
and some triumph to hold the bold adventurer Ethan Allen, 
in irons in a dungeon in Cornwall." 

This gallant American was taken prisoner, fighting with 
the utmost bravery in Canada under the banners of Mont- 
gomery. He was immediately loaded with irons, and trans- 
ported to England, in that condition, on board of a man-of- 



PEACE OF 17G3. 

war. On some observations being made in the House of SECT 
Lords, by the duke of Richmond, concerning his treatment, v^"^ 
the earl of Suffolk, one of the ministry, made this reply— 
*' The noble duke says, we brought over Ethan Allen in irons 
to this country, but were afraid to try him, lest he should be 
acquitted by an English jury, or that we should not be able 
legally to convict him. I do assure his Grace, that he is 
equally mistaken in both his conjectures; we neither had a 
doubt but we should be able to legally convict him, nor were 
we afraid that an English jury would have acquitted him; 
nor further was it out of any tenderness to the man, who, I 
maintain, had justly forfeited his life to the offended laws of 
his country. But I will tell his Grace the true motives which 
induced administration to act as they did. We were aware 
that the rebels had lately made a considerable number of pri- 
soners, and we accordingly avoided bringing him to his trial 
from considerations of prudence; from a dread of the conse- 
quences of retaliation; not fi-om a doubt of his legal guilt, or 
a fear of his acquittal by an English jury."* 

The conduct and temper of the ministry in the case of Ethan 
Allen, — which would have been the same in that of Montgo- 
mery, had he fallen into their hands, — deserves to be visited 
with the contrast, which is aflbrdea in such a trait as the fol- 
lowing, related by general Bourgoyne in the House of Com- 
mons, on the 26th of May, 1778. 

" The district of Saratoga is the property of major general 
Scuyler of the American troops ; there W( re large barracks built 
by him which took fire, the day after the British army arrived 
on the ground. General Scuyler had likewise a very good dwell- 
ing-house, exceeding large store-houses, great saw-mills, and 
other out buildings, to the value altogether, perhaps, of 10,000/. 
A few days before the negotiation with general Gates, the enemy 
had formed a plan to attack me ; a large column of troops were 
approaching to pass the small river, preparatory to a general 
action, and were entirely covered from the fire of my artil- 
lery by those buildings. Sir, I avow that I gave the order to 
set them on fire; and in a very short time that whole property, 
I have described, was consumed. But, to show that the per- 
son most deeply concerned in that calamity, did not put the 
construction upon it, Avhich it has pleased the honourable gen- 
tleman to do, I must inform the House, that one of the first 
persons I saw, after the convention was signed, v/as general 
Scuyler. I expressed to him my regret at the event which 



1776, 



'i DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

IRT r. had happened, and the reasons which had occasioned it. He 
desired me to think no more of it; said the occasion justified 
it, according to the principles and rules of war, and that he 
should have done the same upon the same occasion, or words 
to that effect. He did more — he sent an aid-de-camp to con- 
duct me to Albany, in order, as he expressed, to procure me 
better quarters than a stranger might be able to find. This 
gentleman conducted me to a very elegant house, and to my: 
great surprise, presented me to Mrs. Scuyler and her family?* 
and in this general's house I remained during my whole stav*^ 
at Albany, with a table of more than twenty covers for me and 
my friends, and every other possible demonstration of hospi- 
tality." 

r. I do not wish to depreciate the value, or detract from 
the glory, of the exertions made by the great champions of the 
American cause in the British Parliament. The Chalhams, 
the Camdens, the Shipleys, and the Barres, were animated 
by a love of justice, and a hatred of oppression; and these 
noble sentiments predominated equally, in the breasts of many 
of our less conspicuous friends throughout the British nation. 
But nothing is more certain, than that the opposition, gene- 
rally, to the plans of ministers, had no immediate or princi- 
pal reference to the rights and interests of America. It arose 
out of pre-existing domestic divisions; and the parties mar- 
shalled themselves accordingly in the new dispute — the tories 
and high churchmen on the side of government; the religious 
dissenters and the assertors of the principles of 1688, in the 
train of the whig-leaders in parliament, candidates for place, 
and invariable antagonists of those in possession. The old 
combat was renewed with fresh fury; the oppression of Ame- 
rica served as a battery for the minority; while the treasury- 
bench and the dispensers of crown patronage, made use of the 
prospect of her subjection — which would open a new exche- 
quer, and a new chapter in the red book, — to multiply adhe- 
rents and fortify themselves in power. Doubtless, had they 
accomplished their object in America, — had their arms and 
their arts been successful in that quarter, with whatever ha- 
voc of free institutions, and noble lives, and fair creations of 
manly toil — they would have attained all their ends at home, 
and now flourish in British history, as do the Clives and the 
Hastings in the annals of the India-House. 

The point is no longer open to controversy, that the ministry' 
had a majority of the British people with them in the begin- 



PEACE OF 1763. '2 

ning of the war.* The Bi-itish nation sanctioned the harshest SECT, 
measures of coercion through ignorance of the true state of 
the case, and a blind pride of opinion. By degrees, as her 
agriculture, trade, and manufactures, began to be seriously 
affected by the expenses and embarrassments of the contest, 
the classes dependent upon the prosperity of those branches of 
inddltry, saw it in a less favourable light; and passing from 
private disagreements and expostulations with the ministry, to 
an open approval of the policy urged by an indefatigable par- 
liamentary opposition, determined the peace and the recogni- 
tion of our independence. Circumstances brought the affair to 
public opinion in the last resort ; and that opinion yielded to a 
calculation of profit and loss. No generous sentiment or broad 
political reasoning, mingled itself in fact, or had any sensible 
influence, with the business-like deliberation of its arbiters 
and immediate instruments. There were none at this crisis, 
as there were none at any antecedent period, who " hailed it 
as an extension of British honour and happiness, that great, 
and happy, and independent communities of British descent, 
should exist in America, with the best characteristics of 
British manners and institutions." In parliament, all voices 
proclaimed the emancipation of the colonies as an evil of the 
first magnitude.! The question of our independence had, at 
the outset, to do with the spirit of corruption and tyranny in 



• The testimony of the ministerial party is emphatically positive on this 
point. Lord North said (May 14th, 1777) " he might justly affirm, that there 
was a very great majority of the nation at large, who were for prosecuting 
the war against their rebellious subjects in America, till they should acknow- 
ledge tlie legislative supremacy of parhament." So, Mr. Jenkinson — (March 
17th, 1778) — " All degrees of people arose in one unanimous resentment, 
and the war became a popular war. I say this war with America has been 
a popular war," &.c. 

t In the debate of July 10th, 1782, on American Independence, the Earl 
of Shelburne said, — " With respect to America, he had always considered her 
independence as a great evil which Britain had to dread, and to guard against. 
He had spoken of it in this manner for years past, and when he believed he 
■was joined in sentiment by every man in the country. He had always believed 
and declared, that the independence of America was an evil as much to be 
apprehended and dreaded by America as by Britain ! This had always been 
his opinion ; and he had constantly laboured, by every means in his power, 
to persuade men, that this was the case, in his applications to private men 
and to public men, to individuals and to bodies of men. He wished to God, 
that he had been appointed to urge that proposition, and to maintain it be- 
fore congress ! He was one of the last men in the country who had been 
brought over to agree that Britain ought to acknowledge the independence 
of America ; but circuftistances, he confessed, were changed, and he was 
now of opinion that it was become a necessary evil which the country must 
fTidure to avoid a greatei"," &c. 
Vol. I.—C'c 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

the cabinet, and of arrogance and commercial monopoly in the 
people. In the end, it appeared not merely less dangerous to 
the monopoly than was thought, but even likely to prove the 
reverse. This consideration abated the fierceness and ac- 
celerated the submission, of pride, which had finally, a severer 
struggle, in yielding to France and Spain. The opposition 
leaders who succeeded the authors of the war in the cabinet^ 
were carried onward, irresistibly, to the last concession, by the 
principles upon which they mounted to power, and by the 
course of events. As regards the dispositions and personal 
views of the Shelburne administration, the history, now fully, 
disclosed, of the negotiations for peace, has left few grounds of 
admiration or gratitude. 

' 8. It Has been said, and it may be true, that, notwithstand- 
ing the addition of one hundred millions sterling made to the 
British national debt, the effusion of so much blood, the humi- 
liation correlative to the triumph of France and Spain, the_ 
indelible stains left in the national character, not a few 
of the English politicians Jinding the trade -with America 
retained^ and even likely to be indefimteli) enlarged^ were 
glad, and openly rejoiced, that the struggle wnth such potent 
colonies, foreseen to be inevitable in progress of time, had 
ended on such easy terms. But it is much more certain 
that with multitudes of all classes, the dismemberment of 
the empire left an ulceration, " a galling wakefulness," 
which found relief only in the most extravagant or malignant 
hopes; and that the experience of the war was lost upon the 
majority of the nation, in regard to the character and destinies 
of the colonies. On the conclusion of peace, it was confidently 
announced and believed, that the confederacy of the States 
would quickly be dissolved; that the forces of Great Britain 
remaining among them, might be called in to quell the disor- 
ders, which the separation from the mother countiy must pro-^ 
duce; that a second revolution would happen, and restore 
them, penitent and submissive, to her dominion. Indeed, to 
induce them to lay their independence at her feet, nothing 
more would soon be necessary, than to hold out the threat of 
considering and treating them, as a foreign nation in matters* 
of trade. The Americans were still cowards, for the Irish, had... 
fought their battles, as well by sea as by land ;* and, at all 



* The modesty of this assertion was the more remarkable from the noto- 
rious fact, that the Irish and Scotch troops, and the German mercenaries, 
formed the major part of the force which England employed against the 



PEACE OF 1 763. ^ 

events, if they were not driven by intestine confusion and dis- SECT 
tress, to return to their allegiance, Spain would involve them '^^'^^ 
in awful difficulties, by the claims she was likely to prefer on 
that part of Louisiana given up by the treaty. 

Such were the topics of consolation administered by writers 
of authority, and greedily swallowed by men in office. Lord 
Sheffield embodied them in a pamphlet soon after the ratifica- 
tion of the definitive treaty, and took, by general consent, the 
station of oracle, which he ought never to lose, so marvel- 
ously have events confirmed all his opinions. I cannot resist 
the temptation of quoting some of the most striking of these, 
as they show the spirit of the times in England. — " It will not 
be an easy matter to bring the American states to act as a na- 
tion; they are not to be feared as such by us." " We might as 
reasonably dread the effects of combinations among the Ger- 
man, as among the American states, and deprecate the resolves 
of the Diet as those of Congress." " Every circumstance 
proves that it will be extreme folly to enter into any engage- 
ments with them, bt/ xvhich we may not wish to be hound here- 
after^''* " There is not a possibility that America will main- 
tain a navy." " That country concerning which writers of a 
lively imagination have lately said so much, is weakness 
itself.''''] " It is not probable the American states will have a 
very free trade in the Mediterranean; it will not be the interest 
of any of the great maritime powers to protect them from the 
Barbary states. They cannot protect themselves from the 
latter; they cannot pretend to a navy.":}: " The authority of 
the Congress can never be maintained over those distant and 
boundless western regions, and her nominal subjects will 
spieedily imitate and multiply the examples of independence."^ 
" The population of America is not likely to increase as it 
has done, at least on her coast."|| " There is no country in 
Europe which pays such heavy taxes as the American states,"^ 
lVc. 

Looking back to the exasperation and commotions which 
were raised in America by the stamp act, and to the total 
change of the scene on its repeal, Mr. Burke made the just 
remark that " so sudden a calm recovered after so violent a 



colonies. The ministry conceived the plan of hiring twenty thousand Rus- 
sians besides, to assist in "fighting their battles" on this continent. 

* Observations on the Commerce of the United States, 2d edition, p. 198. 

t Ibid. p. 206. § Ibid. p. 190. U Ibid. p. 193. 

i Ibid. p. 204. II Ibid. p. 201; 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

storm was without parallel in history." The colonists almost 
universally vied in demonstrations of gratitude, and glowing 
expressions of loyalty, as if the repeal had been a spontaneous 
and inestimable boon, and not a retraction, produced by party 
interests, of an impolitic usurpation. There was something 
not less remarkable, and admirable, in the transition at the 
conclusion of the revolutionary war. Notwithstanding the 
enormity of the provocations on which the Americans had 
taken up the sword, the severity of their sufferings during the 
struggle, and the vindictive and ruthless character of the hos- 
tilities waged against them, the tide of their affections turned 
rapidly towards the mother country,* and the policy of re- 
newing with her, the closest and most liberal relations com- 
patible with independence, received the sanction of a large 
majority throughout the confederation. 

Taking the representations of the British writers themselves 
concerning the merits of the dispute so solemnly terminated, , 
it is impossible to imagine a case, in which natural duty, re- 
tributive justice, and the common good, more plainly exacted . 
from the other side, more even than a mere correspondence of 
sentiments and views. And yet what a contrast ! as proved by 
the vogue of Sheffield's writings and doctrines, and from such i 
statements as the following, made in 1 784, by his ablest an- - 
tagonist.f 

" It is sufficient, at this time, to support; an opinion of the ■ 
propriety of endeavouring to restore our broken connexion with i 
America, by those conciliatory means, which best tend to re- 
gain the affections of a people, from whom we have derived, 
and from whom we may yet derive, the most solid benefits, to 
be deemed the sacrifices of the interests of Great Britain to 
those of America. However laudable, however necessary the 
pursuit, there is a prejudice among us arising from intemperate 
passion, and the vexation of disappointment, that precludes, 
obstructs, or, in some shape or other, ultimately destroys it," 

It would lead me too far to detail the facts which have 
rendered unquestionable and notorious, the continued pre^ 
valence of those unworthy dispositions, and the steady pro- 
secution of a scheme of action in itself demonstrative of 
their inveteracy. I could produce British authority on this; 



* This Is not, indeed, the opinion of Judge Marshall (Life of Washington, 
vol. V. p. 355) ; but it is proved, by the victory gained for the politics most 
favourable to Great Britain in all respects. 

j- Champion — "Considerations on the present situation of Great Britain," 
London, &c. 



PEACE OF 17G3. ^ 

head, in the shape of direct confessions and self-reproof, con- SECT 
veyed in books and parhamentary debates, for every consecu- 
tive year from the peace of 1782 to the present time. From 
the abundance of this kind of testimony, I will take, at random, 
some feAv morsels which no third party at least, will reject as 
invalid, and which shall have relation to periods so recent as 
1808, and 1812. 

"■ In England," says Mr. Baring, " our insensible mono- 
poly of the American trade does not appear ever to have been 
properly appreciated : the events of a civil war left naturally 
deeper impressions on the unsuccessful than the successful 
party, and while every little state of Europe was courted, that 
afforded limited markets for our manufactures, we seemed to 
regret that we owed any thing to our former subjects; and an 
increasing commercial intercourse has been carried on under 
feelings of unsubdued enmity^ of which the government, instead 
of checking sentiments as void of common sense as of magna- 
nimity, has rather set the fashion. To this error, in my opi- 
nion, the present state of the public mind towards America is 
in a great measure owing. Her success and prosperity, 
though we dare not fairly avow it, have displeased us, and 
sentiments have been imperceptibly encouraged towards her 
as ungenerous as they are impolitic."''^ 

" I know," said Mr. Brougham, in parliament, in 1812, 
'' the real or affected contempt with which some persons in 
this country treat our kinsmen of the West. I fear some 
angry and jealous feelings have survived our more intimate 
connexion with them, — feelings engendered by the event of its 
termination, but which, it would be wiser, as well as more 
manly to forget." 

" No small part of the English nation," says the Edinburgh 
Review, " look with feelings of peculiar hostility towards the 
people to which they bear the nearest resemblance, and wil- 
lingly- abet their rulers in treating them with less respect and 
less cordiality than any other nation. Neither the government 
nor the populace of this country have forgiven America for 
having made herself independent; and the lowest calumnies and 
grossest abuse are daily employed by a court-faction to keep 
alive the most vulgar prejudices." — (No. 23. 1809.) "The 
Americans asserted their independence upon principles which 
they derived from us. — Their rebellion was the surest proof 
of their genuine descent. They are descended from our loins 



* Inquiry into the Causes and Consequences of the Orders in Council, 
1808. p. 19. 



5 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

RT I. — ^they retain our usages and manners — ^they read our books- 
■"^^^ they have copied our freedom — they rival our courage — an'i 
yet they are less popular and less esteemed among us than thl 
base and bigoted Portuguese, and the ferocious and ignorahi 
Russians." 

" There is not an individual who has attended at all to the 
progress of the present dispute with America, (1812) who 
does not see that it was embittered from the first, and wantonly 
urged to its present fatal issue, by the insolent, petulant, and 
preposterous tone of those very individuals who insisted upon 
that miserable experiment — and plunged their own country in 
wretchedness, only to bring down upon it the reluctant hosti- 
lity of its best customers and allies," &c. 

9. The reign of Lord Sheffield's sapient opinions, was natu- 
rally prolonged in Great Britain, by the comparative insignifi- 
cance of the military and naval establishments of the United 
States under the federal administration ; their total disarray 
after its overthrow ; the simplicity of their institutions, and the 
vehement altercations of the parties into which they were 
thrown. It became anew a common belief and fond hope 
with the ministerial politicians, that America might yet be re- 
gained by arms or by arts ; and even those of the Opposition 
settled down in a contemptuous commiseration of her weak- 
ness and sinister destinies. The rencontre of the Chesapeake 
and Leopard made it quite certain, for all parties, that the 
Americans were cowards; that the Irish had fought their 
battles in the revolution; and that there was only food for 
merriment or pity in the idea of their meeting, at sea, British 
skill and valour. The Edinburgh Review told confidently 
of " the feeble and shadowy texture of the federal govern- 
ment;"* — it had '"■ little hopes of a system of polity which, in 
an advancing society, offered no prizes to talents, and no dis- 
tinctions to wealth;"! and foresaw that " the slender tie which 
held the LTnited States together would burst at once in the 
tumult of war."! In 1809, the same journal, professing 
always superior liberality and closeness of observation, as to 
our affairs, discoursed of us in the following strain: " As it is 
quite impossible to have too much jealousy of France, so, to- 
wards America we can scarcely have too little. When such 
reasoners as Mr. Leckie, gravely talk of our being insulted 
by the Porte, we plainly perceive the errors of a man who 
has lived in the immediate neighbourhood of the Turks, until 

* No. 28. t Ibid. + No. 24. 



PEACE OF 1763. 2 

he has forgotten their insignificance. But when France is SECT, 
stretching her iron coasts on all sides of us,— when her fleets 
and her camps are within sight — and we alone, of all Europe, 
have not been conquered by her arms; — it is almost as ridicu- 
lous to be jealous of America as of Turkey — of a nation three- 
thousand miles off — scarcely kept together by the weakest 
government in the world, — with no army, and half a dozen 
frigates — and knowing no other means of intercourse with 
other countries than by peaceful commerce."* 

In 1812, Mr. Brougham struck the same key in parliament, 
and displayed an equal mastery of his subject. 

" Jealousy of America ! whose armies are yet at the plough, 
or making, since your policy has willed it so, awkward 
(though improving) attempts at the loom — whose assembled 
navies could not lay siege to an English sloop of war : — Jea- 
lousy, of a power which is necessarily peaceful as well as weak, 
but which, if it had all the ambition of France and her armies 
to back it, and all the navy of England to boot, nay, had it the 
lust of conquest which marks your enemy, and your armies 
as well as navy to gratify it — is placed at so vast a distance 
as to be perfectly harmless ! and this is the nation, of which, 
for our honour's sake, we are desired to cherish a perpetual 
jealously, for the ruin of our best interests."! 

The Quarterly Review scarcely deigned even to pass a jest 
upon the impotency of the States, and would not " stoop to de- 
g^rade the Bi-itish navy by condescending to enter into any 
comparison between the high order, the discipline, and com- 
fort, of an English man-of-war, and an American frig-ate ;''^ 
it " disdained any such comparison."^ This high disdain of 
all the belligerent capacities of America pervaded, not only 
the royal councils, but the whole British naval and military 
service. In the first rencontre at sea, the Alert, with 20 guns 
mounted, bore down triumphantly upon the American frigate 
Essex, and fired a broadside, expecting to prove that " the as- 
sembled navies of America could not lay siege to an English 
sloop of war :" and though the issue gave an air of paralogy 
to the business, yet it was soon followed by an instance of the 
same happy confidence in the case of the frigate Guerriere. 

I must do the two oracular journals which I have quoted on 
this head, the justice to remark, that, at the end of the con- 
test, although they omitted to remind their readers of their 



• No. 24. 

t Speech on the present state of Commerce and Manufactures, 

i No. 15. Article on Madison's War. 



fS DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

^.RT I. first opinions, they did not pass by the perplexing facts in ab- 
solute silence. The Quarterly Review could condescend to 
say, " The Americans have fought on the element of England 
with British spirit. On that element, let it be fairly acknow- 
ledged, we have much to commend in them, and we have still 
something- to redeem,^''* Even before the termination of hos- 
tilities, the Edinburgh Review told of " the discomfiture of 
the English naval resources by the American marine, of 
which, by a whimsical coincidence, we have learnt the exist- 
ence in the same documents that detail its successes." And 
speedily came out the round, unvarnished tale : 

*' We have been worsted in most of our naval encounters 
with the Americans, and baffled in most of our enterprises by 
land — with a naval force on their coast, exceeding that of the 
enemy in the proportion of ten to one, we have lost two out of 
three, of all the sea-fights in which we have been engaged—* 
and at least three times as many men as our opponent; while 
their privateers swarm unchecked round all our settlements, 
and even on the coast of Europe, and have already made prize 
of more than seventeen hundred of our merchant vessels."! 

It is true, and detracts a little from the force of these ac 
knowledgments, that we read in the same number of the Jour 
nal — ^" the national vanity of the Americans has scarcely any 
other field of triumph than the discomfiture of Britain in the 
war of the Revolution." We might produce, by way of re 
joinder, perhaps, from the same hand, out of a number of 
passages implying the existence of other fields of triumph, the 
following : 

" History has no other example of so happy an issue to a 
revolution consummated by a long civil war, as that of the 
Americans. Indeed, it seems to be very near a maxim in 
political philosophy, that a free government cannot be obtain- 
ed, where a long employment of military force rs necessary to 
establish it. In the case of America, however, the military, 
power was disarmed by that very influence which makes » 
revolutionary army so formidable to liberty ; for the images of 
grandeur and power — those meteor lights, which are exhaled 
in the stormy atmosphere of a revolution, to allure the ambi- 
tious and dazzle the weak — made no impression upon the firm 
and virtuous soul of the American commander."^ 

" In the LTnited States, M. Talleyrand was surprised to 
observe, that a long and violent civil war had left scarcely any 
trace of its existence in the character of the intercourse of 



* No. 30. t No. 48. t No. 25. 



PEACE OP 1763. 2 

ihe various factions which divided the people. No hatred or SECT. 
animosity was perceivable among individuals ; no turbulence '".^•v-" 
or agitation of character had been permanently engrafted on 
the sober, solid habits of the colonists. The profound remark 
of Machiavel appeared for once to fail, that every revolution 
contains the seeds of another, and scatters them behind it."* 

" The spectacle presented by America during the last thirty 
or forty years, ever since her emancipation began to produce 
its full effect, and since she fairly entered the lists as an inde- 
pendent nation — has been, beyond every thing formerly known 
in the history of mankind, imposing and instructive."! 

Dr. Seybert has introduced into his Statistics a compendi- 
ous statement of the nuval events of the war, which furnishes 
an edifying commentary upon the first speculations of the Bri- 
tish politicians. 

" The American navy triumphed in fourteen engagements, 
in some of which, the contending forces were nearly equal, 
and in many of them that of the enemy was decidedly supe- 
rior. The cases of the Chesapeake and the Argus are the 
only instances in which it can be pretended that the enemy 
had any fair claims to success, upon the ground of the equality 
of the respective forces. 

" The superiority of our gunnery is confirmed by the num- 
ber of killed and wounded on board the enemy's vessels, and 
the condition of their ships after the actions ; in several instan- 
:es the British vessels were sunk whilst the fight lasted : in 
most instances they Avere so materially injured as to make their 
destruction absolutely necessary; whereas our vessels were 
ommonly, with scarcely any loss of time, ready to commence 
mother combat." 

The number of British merchant vessels captured by the 
A.mericans, and which arrived in port or were destroyed, is 
letermined, by an irrefragable estimate,:): to amount to ^!iyg 
:hoir slfffd _fx v e^feuhdr ed/; more, in all probability, than Britain 
ost in all the wars which grew out of the French revolution. 

Much clamour, it may be recollected, was raised in Eng- 
and, concerning the real amount of force of the American 
hips, compared with the nominal. But we may judge with 
vhat grace this charge was so indignantUj made, by the fol- 
owing statement which I copy from the Regulations relative 
i^the Royal Navy, officially promulgated in 1817. 



•• No. 11. t No. 59. 

t See that very useful work — Niles' Weekly Register, for January 1815. 

Vol. I,— -D d 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THE, &C. 

" All ships of the second rate^ though rated at 98, carry up 
wards of 100 guns. 

" In the third rate, some of the ships rated at 80 guns, car- 
ry near 90, and others rated at 74, carry 80 guns. 

" In the fourth rate, of the ships rated at 50 guns, one class 
(that on two decks) carries 58 guns; another (that on one deck) 
carries 60 and upwards. 

" The frigates rated at 40 guns, carry 50 ; and those rated 
at 38, carry 46 and upwards. 

" The majority of those rated at 36, carry 44 ; and some of 
those rated at 32, carry 46 and 48 ; being more than others 
that are rated at 38 and 36. 

" Similar differences between the real and the nominal 
amount of force exists in the fifth rate, but it is unnecessary 
to specify the details." 

In the article on Michaud's Travels in America, our friend) 
of the Edinburgh Review remarked of the Avestern Americana 
with a mixture of contempt and compassion^ — " their general 
distil brandy, their colonels keep tavern, and their statesmei 
feed pigs." But it was discovered, by the progress of events 
that these generals and colonels could, notwithstanding, pu|i 
sue the occupation implied by their titles ; and the affairs c 
Plattsburg and New Orleans confounded the critics. " ^ 
have actually had to witness the incredible spectacle of a rega 
lar well appointed army of British veterans, retiring bcfot 
little more than an equal force of American militia !" -'l 

The whole result of the war on the land, to which the ge 
nerals that distil brandy, and the colonels that feed p'igs 
largely contributed, must have astonished them still mor« 
An aggregate loss of nearly twelve thousand of his majest 
troops, and the inefficiency of a force of fifty thousand regifli 
lars operating at one time ! And, with respect to the statesmen 
tvho feed pigs^ there must have been a lively surprise, and 
some alteration of sentiment, when the Marquis Wellesley 
was found declaring in the House of Lords, that, " in his opi- 
nion, the American Commissioners at Ghent had shown the 
most astonishing superiority over the British during the whole 
of the correspondence ; and that he had little doubt the British 
papers were communicated from the common fund of the mi 
nisters in England."* 



1815. 



Speech respecting the Negotiation for Peace with America, April IS 



! 



2U 



SECTION yn. 



OF THE HOSTILITIES OF THE BRITISH REVIEWS. 

1. After the Revolution of 1688, and still more after the SEC 
establishment of the House of Hanover, the North American 
colonies preferred titles of a peculiar force, to the highest es- 
teem and favour of every Briton who respected and loved the 
principles, with which those events were connected. They 
had been obnoxious to the despotic plans of the Stuarts, and 
suffered from their tyranily ; they had asserted the rights pro- 
^ claimed in Magna Charta, with more boldness, and maintain- 
i^ed them with more success, than the mother country ; they 
1" had limited the ravages, and disappointed the voracity, of des- 
potism and corruption, by furnishing a secure asylum for the 
. persecuted, as well as the distressed from whatever cause.* 
'On these grounds, and the many others developed in the fore- 
1 going pages, their merits might be supposed to be almost in- 
finite with every English whig of the last fifty years ; so great, 
at least, as to make it, for one of the present day, not only a 
perversion of natural feeling, but a political apostacy, to treat 
of their character and concerns, except upon a system of the 
, utmost liberality and indulgence. Chatham and Charles Fox 
had given them an irresistible claim to gratitude and respect, 
'in ascribing to their revolt the salvation of the British consti- 
■tution. " The resistance of the Americans to the oppressions 
^ of the mother country," said the last of those canonized states- 
men, in the House of Commons, " has undoubtedly preserved 
the liberties of mankind." 

Our revolution, in its motive, conduct, and conclusion, 
united in its favour the suffrages of the most enlightened por- 
tion of cpntinental Europe ; and there has been of late years 
^ hardly an individual in England, holding a certain rank in the 
: literary or political world, who has ventured, directly to deny 
it, the most exalted characteristics. The writers of the Quar- 
terly Review have, indeed, seemed to refuse it all the felicity 
with which it had been invested by others, in asserting that, 
" when America became independent, she had no race of edu- 

* See note N 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

cated men to fill the situations which used to be respected,"* 
but even they, the official guardians of tory principles, preju- 
dices, and interests, have yielded to it a trioute of no trifling- 
import. " The anglo- Americans, an active and enlightened 
people, animated by the spirit and information derived from 
their mother country, contended, as they had done in the pre- 
ceding century, with pertinacious zeal, for a civil right, the 
grant of which, in the early part of the contest, might have 
restored their tranquillity and preserved their allegiance. 
Happily for them, their patriots were not atheists, nor their 
leaders robbers; their men of pvopez'ty, education^ and morals, 
took the lead, and the physical power of the poor and the prof- 
ligate was not set up to plunder, to expatriate,"! &c. T here 
is here enough of positive and negative praise, to induce us to 
impute the declaration first quoted, to an Ai'/zei'^ belief that all our 
educated men had perished in the course of the revolution ! 

The North American settlements presented, from their 
commencement, what was pre-eminently calculated to engage 
the affections, and kindle the benevolence, of the Christian and 
the philanthropist, in the rapid and extensive conquests made 
on the wilderness, for religion and civilization. Clothing the 
desert with beauty and reclaiming it to fruitfulness ; enlarg- 
ing indefinitely the boundaries of polished nature, and open- 
ing the way for the existence of millions of freemen of the 
English race over one of the most favoured portions of the 
earth, were achievements which, with all their dignity and va- 
lue, did not more powerfully recommend our American fore- 
fathers to the favour and protection of the good and the wise, 
than the motives from which they were undertaken, and the 
manner in which they were performed. " There was no cor- 
ner of the globe," exclaimed Chatham, " to which the ances- 
tors of our fellow subjects in America, would not have fled, 
rather than submit to the slavish and tyrannical spirit which 
prevailed in their native country." Of such men, no Eng- 
lishman boasting of his attachment to the present theory of the 
British constitution, should, to be consistent, think or speak 
without a glow of admiration. And we, their successors, 
whose spirit, as far at least as liberty is concerned, cannot 
be said to have degenerated from theirs ; who have preserv- 
ed their institutions, and continued their labours, so as,, 
with similar dangers and toils, to bring under the dominion 
of Christianity and civilized art, regions immense beyond the 



* No. 4. Article on Holmes' American Annals. 
f Artide on Spain and her colonies. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

grasp of their imagination— we, constituting now a republic SEC. 
of " ten millions of British freemen, who may be numbered ^-^^ 
among the most intelligent, the most moral, the bravest, and 
the most happy, of the human race"* — might well expect, as 
we deserve, to find in the philosophers and whigs of the mother 
country, even though of the class of critics by profession, not 
scoffers and detracters, but earnest friends and panegyrists. 
The Scottish tribunal that sits in constant judgment over us, 
by virtue of a mysterious authority, seems to have been aware 
of our claims in some of the respects upon which I have 
touched. Such language as the following, from the thirteenth 
number of the Edinburgh Review, is in unison with reason 
and true sentiment, and will make the reproach double, if we 
should find those who uttered it, acting in contradiction to its 
spii'it. 

" This immense sphere of activity in America, is the crea- 
tion of yesterday. Even Mr. Ashe, disposed as he is to decry 
every thing American, is obliged to admit, that she displays, 
in the wonders of her growing industry, a picture at once 
striking and exhilarating. It is impossible to contemplate such 
a scene without exulting in the triumphs of industry. This 
peaceful power is here subduing regions of growing forests, 
which conquering armies would fear to enter; and extending, 
with silent rapidity, the limits of civilized existence. We 
cannot help wishing that our countrymen, in general, were a 
little more alive to the feelings which we conceive such a spec- 
tacle is calculated to excite ; and that they could be brought to 
sympathize a little more in the progress of a kindred people, 
destined to carry our language, our arts, and our interests too,, 
over regions more vast than ever acknowledged the sway of 
the Caesars of Rome." 

Notwithstanding this just and obvious view of the case; the 
commercial obligations of which I have treated; and all the 
ingratiating points of our history, with which the better in- 
formed among the British writers cannot be supposed to be 
unacquainted, the United States have invariably experienced 
from them more obloquy and ridicule, than the nations of the 
European continent, the farthest removed from Great Britain 
in their origin, institutions, policy, knowledge, and moral 
qualities. There has been no period since our revolution, at 
which a liberal Briton, looking to the comparative treatment 
«f the Americans, in the British books and parliamentary dis- 



• Sir James Mackintosh. Speech on the Treaty with America, April llth, 
1815. 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

IT I. cussions, might not have repeated what Mr. Burke indignantly 
y^^^ uttered in 1775 — " The faults which grow out of the luxuriance 
of freedom, appear much more shocking to us, than the base 
vices which are generated in the rankness of servitude." The 
periodical publications have served, as constant emunctories 
tor those humours, respecting the diffusiveness and virulence^ 
of which, I have already produced adequate testimon}'. It is 
to the language and temper, of some of the most important of 
those publications, that I mean to direct my attention at pre- 
sent. I propose to fill up this section with quotations of their 
invidious suggestions, and with cursory observations upon such 
of these as seem to call for immediate notice. 

2. The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, — confessedly 
at the head of all publications of the kind in the world, and 
works of great authority wherever letters are cultivated, — 
have- taken the lead in the war of defamation and derision, 
against the American people and institutions. They have, 
indeed, carried opposite ensigns, and made their attacks in 
modes somew^hat dissimilar. The hostilities of the English 
critics have been more direct and coarse, and accompanied 
with fewer professions of moderation and good will; those of 
the Scottish, have been waged, almost always with protesta- 
tions of friendship, and at times with the affectation of a for- 
mal defence of the object. When the one has said,* — " pro- 
fessing ourselves among the number of persons who experience 
no very particular degree of affection for our transatlantic 
brethren;''^ and the other-^— " the Americans are not liked in this 
country, and we are not now going to recotnmend them as ob- 
jects of our love ; we are no admirers of the Americans j"| 



* Quarterly. No. 24. 

\ The pliant Boswell set the example to his countrymen, of this form of 
speech, adding, however, a maxim which- they seem to have overlooked. 
" AVell do you know that I have no kindness for the Bostonians. But nations 
or bodies of men should, as well as individuals, have a fair trial, and not he 
condemned on character alone." (Letter to Dr. Johnson, Jan. 27, 1775.) 
The Quarterly Review lias preferred tlie more energ'etic spirit and sousing 
manner of the Dr. himself; of which a sample is afforded in the following 
passage of his Biography. "From a pleasing subject," says Boswell, "he 
(Dr. Johnson) I know not how or ^'hy, made a sudden transition to one upon 
which he was a violent aggressor ; for he said, " I am willing to love all man- 
kind, except an Jtriierican :" and his inflammable corruption bursting into 
horrid fire, he " breathed out threatenings and slaughter ;" calling them 
" Rascals — Robbers — Pirates ;" and exclaiming, he'd " burn and destroy 
them." Miss Seward, looking to him with mild but steady astonishment, said, 
" Sir, this is an instance that we are always most violent against those whom 
we have injured." — lie was irritated still more by this delicate and keen 



BRITISH REVIEWS. i 

they approached near enough in language to betray the iden- SEC. 
tjty of their spirit. Both have canted about the tender for- ^-^^ 
bearance due on the two sides of the Atlantic — " the sacred 
bond of blood and language ;" " the endearing community of 
religion and laws;" "-the inheritance of the same principles 
of government and morals;" " the beauty of the example of 
natural friends among nations, in contradistinction to the too 
readily admitted division of natural enemies," &c. — and they 
have harped upon these topics, in the sequel of a tissue of the 
bitterest contumelies and sarcasms. But the Edinburgh Re- 
view particularly, has gone farther, with a modesty which is 
truly unrivalled. Whilst uttering the most disparaging opi- 
nions, and discharging vo.Uies of sneers, it has inveighed fiercely 
against " the bitter sneering at every thing in America," by 
the ministerial writers ; reproached them for their insolent, 
petulant and preposterous tone; wondered profoundly at the 
little cordiality and respect for America among the British 
nation ; and seemed to take to itself vast credit for the contraiy 
dispositions. 

Recently, it has furnished an instance of this manoeuvre, 
which outstrips all competition, and has the air of a wanton 
mockery of the understandings of its readers, as much as of a 
device of party-strategy. In the body of that article of the 
61st number, which contains the heaviest denunciations, and 
some of the most flippant undersaying, ever directed against 
this country, we read the following phrases, the first of which 
is, by the way, a fine specimen of purism in style. " Among 
other faults with which the present English government is 
chargeable, the vice of impertinence has lately crept into our 
Cabinet; and the Americans have been treated with ridicule 
and contempt." " We wish well to America; we rejoice in 
her prosperity, and are delhghted to resist the absurd imperti- 
nence Tvith xvhich the character of her people is often treated in 
this countrij^ but," &c, 

I have already given, in the quotations which I have made, 
some evidence of the validity of these pretensions, and of the 
temper and consistency of the Quarterly Review. But we 
have not, perhaps, had enough exactly to determine, the degree 
of authority to which the two bands of critics are respectively 
entitled, in their judgments concerning America; whether on 
the score of liberality in their feelings, gravity in their deli- 
^berations, or steadiness in their opinions. I will, therefore,, ;,^ 



reproach ; and roared out another tremendous volley, which one might fancy 
tould be heard across the Atlantic." (Vol. ii. p. 12.') 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

look back upon the complexion of the articles which they havt 
' devoted to us, pursuing the design which I have mentioned 
above. To begin with the Edinburgh critics, those friends and 
patrons by pre-eminence, who have always been " delighted toi 
resist the absurd impertinence with which the character ofj 
America has been treated in Great Britain." 

They condescended to notice this republic directly, for the > 
first time, in their fourth number, in the article on Davis' 
Travels ; and certainly we had some reason to draw encourag- 
ing presages from their general tone in this outset. There 
were but two passages in the article, which had a sinister aspect 
— one which asserted roundly that habitual drunkenness was 
in no country so prevalent as in the United States — another 
concerning Franklin^ as follows : " It is certahi that the en- 
lightened part of the American community begin now to con- 
sider this boasted character in a very ambiguous point of view, 
and to attach much less consequence and veneration to his 
memory than formerly. To him they are certainly indebted 
for the most important public services, and for his strenuous 
endeavours to introduce among them a taste for science and 
literature; but, on the other hand, his canting exhortations to 
extreme frugality have had their effect in preventing the ex- 
pansion of the noblest principles of the mind ; and his example^ 
VI the dereliction of religion, has certainly lent un w fortunate 
support to the cause of scepticism and infidelity^ 

I should be unjust not to acknowledge that full amends were 
made, at the same tribunal, to the memory of this " boasted 
character," in two copious articles, devoted entirely to his^ 
panegyric, and producing one of those remarkable antinomies 
in its decisions, which fall within the scope of the present ex-- 
position. A few extracts will be sufficient for the intelligence 
of the case. 

" Dr. Franklin, the self-taught American, is the most ra- 
tional, perhaps, of all philosophers. No individual ever possessec 
a juster understanding. In much of what relates to the practi- 
cal wisdom and happiness of life, his views will be found to bel 
admirable, and the reasoning by which they are supportec 
most masterly and convincing. Upon the mechanics an( 
tradesmen of Boston and Philadelphia, he endeavoured, wit! 
aippropriate eloquence, to impress the importance of industryJ 
sobriety and economy, and to direct their wise and humbk 
ambition to the attainment of useful knowledge and honour-4 
able independence. Nothing can be more perfectly and beau- 
tifully adapted to its objects than Dr. Franklin's compositions'! 
of this sort. The strong sense, clear information, and obvioi 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 21 

conviction of the author himself, make most of his moral ex- SEC. Vl 
hortations perfect models of popular eloquence, &c.^*We v^^v-^ 
should think his account of his own life a very useful reading 
for all young persons of unsteady principle, who have their 
fortunes to make or mend in this world."* 

" In one point of view, the name of Franklin must be con- 
sidered as standing higher than any of the others which illus- 
trated the last century. Distinguished as a statesman, he was 
equally great as a philosopher; thus uniting in himself a rare 
degree of excellence in both those pursuits, to excel in either 
of which is deemed the highest praise. Each successive pub- 
lication of this great man's works increases our esteem for 
his virtues, and our admiration of his understanding. We 
can offer the Americans no better advice than to recommend 
to them a constant study of Franklin, of his principles, as 
well as his compositions. The example of this eminent per- 
son teaches that veneration for religion is quite compatible 
with a sound, practical understanding. Franklin was a man 
of a truly pious turn of mind. He appears to have been a 
Christian of the unitarian school. If his own faith had not 
gone so far, he at least would greatly have respected the reli- 
gion of his country, and done every thing to encourage its 
propagation. His moral writings are superior to almost any 
others, in any language ; whether we regard the sound, and 
striking, and useful truths with which they abound, or the 
graceful and entertaining shape in which they are conveyed. 
I His piety was sincere and habitual. Feelings of a devotional 
cast every where break forth in his writings. He is habitually 
a warm advocate for religion."! 

The article on Davis' Travels suggested some kind apolo- 
Igies for us, on the important heads j?f intellect and literature, 
which augured favourably for the justness, as well as libera- 
lity, of the views, which would be always taken in relation to 
those subjects. 

" We do not mean to deny the charges against the litera- 
ture and learning of America: literature is one oi those Jiner 
viamifactures which a new country will always find it easier 
to import than to raise. There must be a great accumulation 
of stock in a nation, and a great subdivision of labour, before 
the arts of composition are brought to any great degree of 
perfection. The great avenues to wealth must be all filled, 
and many left in hereditary opulence or mediocrity, before 

* No. 16. i No. 57. 

Vol. I.— E e 



HOSTILITIES OP THE 

there can be leisure enough, among such a people, to relish 
the beauties of poetry, or to create an effectual demand for 
the productions of genius. These causes may for some time 
retain the genius of America in a state of subordination to that 
of Europe." 

" The truth is, that American genius has displayed itself, 
wherever inducements have been held out for its exertion. 
Their party pamphlets, though disgraced with much intempe- 
rance and scurrility, are Avritten with a keenness and spirit, 
that is not often to be found in the old world; and their ora- 
tors, though occasionally declamatory and turgid, frequently 
possess a vehemence, correctness, and animation, that would 
command the admiration of any European audience, and excite 
the astonishment of those philosophers who have been taught 
to consider the western hemisphere as a grand receptacle for i 
the degeneracies of nature." 

Afterwards, from time to time, we found general opinion* i 
uttered in the same quarter, which bespoke a correct appre- 
hension of our case, and some of which I think it well to intro- 
duce here. 

" Among men, the few who write bear no comparison toi 
the many who read. We hear most of the former, indeed, 
because they are, in general, the most ostentatious part of I 
literary men; but there are innumerable men who, without I 
ever laying themselves before the public, have made use of I 
literature to add to the strength of their understandings, and ! 
to improve the happiness of their lives." 

" We must say, that the Americans are not fairly judged of i 
by their newspapers ; which are written for the most part by 
expatriated Irishmen, or Scotchmen, and other adventurers of I 
a similar description, who take advantage of the unbounded . 
license of the press, to indulge their own fiery passions, and : 
aim at exciting that attention by the violence of their abuse, 
which they are conscious they could never command by thei 
force of their reasonings. The greater part of the polished, 
and intelligent Aynericans appear little on the front of public ■ 
life^ and make no figure in her external history.^'' (1814). 

" It is pleasing to learn, that the isolated inhabitants of the i 
western forests of America are cheered and enlightened with I 
the distant literature of Europe; that there are here men capa?i 
ble of communicating the benefits of its discoveries; and emu-i 
lous in their turn, to extend the boundaries of knowledge by 
new discoveries of their o\vn." (1805). 

" Whenever a taste for literature is created in America, we 
Irave no doubt that her authors will improve and multiply to a 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 2] 

degree that will make oui* exertions necessary to keep the start SEC. V 
we now have of them." (No. 29). \.^^v-^ 

" The great body of the American people is better educated 
and more comfortably situated than the bulk of any European 
community, and possess all the accomplishments that are any 
where to be found in persons of the same occupation and con- 
dition." (No. 25). 

Having represented, or being capable of seeing, the ques- 
tion of our literature and intellectual condition in these lights, 
— discerning the general causes which either retarded our 
advancement, or prevented it from being visible abroad, — 
liberal critics, " well wishers to America," delighted to pro- 
tect her character from the insults of malice and the judgments 
of ignorance, might have been expected to abstain, as much as 
possible, from reciting our unavoidable deficiencies or unsuc- 
cessful attempts; and especially from making them, on everv 
practicable occasion, the subject of burlesque or opprobrium. 
They might have been expected to treat our literary perform- 
ances with the utmost lenity, and to hold out to us whatever 
degree of .positive encouragement was consistent with the true 
interests of literature; the more as, whatever we may have 
arrogated to ourselves in other respects, we have rarely set up 
exorbitant pretensions on the score of our books. Let us see 
how far such expectations have been fulfilled by the liberals of 
the Edinburgh Review. 

The first production of our press brought within their high 
cognizance, was the fifth volume of the Transactions of the 
American Philosophical Society. A society of this description, 
sprung from the most generous aspirations and benevolent 
aims ; formed under the auspices of Franklin and Rittenhouse ; 
iarrested in its promising career by the war of the revolution, 
[which required all the exertions of its members in other fields 
,Df public service ; struggling anew, when the unnatural ag- 
igressor had consented to sheathe the sword, in a community 
'universally engaged in business, and under all the disadvan- 
tages inseparable from a new country, to maintain the ap- 
pearance of vital action, in order to present a rallying point, 
and nucleus of science, for an infant nation — such a societ}' 
was in itself, independently of the general considerations inti- 
mated above, fitted to conciliate forbearance, and even ten- 
derness and support, from the votaries of knowledge in the 
bid world.* Its first offerings might be composed of no very 



♦ See Note O. 



V HOSTILITIES OF THE 

ART I. excellent materials; they might be deficient in interest and 
^■v-^^^ instruction for an European savant; yet, liberal minds, alive 
to the excellence of its object, and the remote influences of its 
rude essays, would not fail to receive them with respect, and 
to rejoice in its very existence, as an auspicious omen, and a 
certain source of future good. Whether actuated by refiec-" 
tions of this kind, or a confidence in its positive merit, many 
of the most illustrious of the scientific world of Europe have 
sought to be ranked among its members ; and displayed the 
title, when obtained, in the front of their works, with evident 
satisfaction. Of this number, I may cite Dugald Stewart, 
the most accomplished and enlightened of the countrymen of 
the Edinburgh critics. 

These, our well-wishers, proceeded, however, with a spirit 
diametrically opposite. They heaped indignities upon the 
volume of the American Transactions, and made their account 
of it, the occasion of innuendos and sallies against the taste 
and learning of America in general. The following extracts 
will speak for themselves. 

" The want of refinement in arts and in Belles Lettres, is, 
by no means, the only circumstance, that distinguishes otir 
kinsmenm North America, from the inhabitants of the eastern 
hemisphere. They appear to be proportionably deficient in 
scientific attainments. The volume now before us, one of the 
very fexv that ever issue from the A7tierican press^ contains the 
whole accumulation of American discovery and observation, 
during a course of peaceful years. It extends to 328 pages, 
and the most interesting communication it has to boast of is 
the valuable paper of our countryman^ Mr. Strickland. Of 
all the academical trifles which have ever been given to the 
world, eighty -nine of the pages, the work of Americans, are 
the most trivial and dull. Our readers will judge with what 
difliculty this mite has been collected, when we mention the 
subject," Sec. * 

" Some of the American philosophers themselves seem to 
have adopted the language of the ludicrously sentimental 
class to which M. Dupont de Nemours (the author of one (rfi 
the papers) belongs, and to have thought it a good substitute 
for the eloquence and power of fine Avriting rvhich Providence 
has denied to their race.''''—'-'- By the manner in which one of 
the American contributors cites, and more especially by hisi 
remai"ks upon classical learning, we are inclined to suspect 
that a man Avho reads the easier Latin poets is not to be met 
with every day in North America." — " We cannot resist the 
temptation of quoting a passage from his paper; the moralizingi 



BRITISH REVIEWS. T. 

part of it is truly American. It is only necessary to add, for SEC. \ 
the information of the American Academies^ that the Latin quo- ^.i^-v-^ 
tation is nothing at all to the purpose," &c. " Meanly as our 
readers may be disposed to think of the American scientific 
circles, they appear to be highly prized by their own mem- 
bers. The society, whose labours we have been describing, at- 
taches to itself the naine of * Philosophical' xvith peculiar ea- 
p-erness ; and the meeting-house^ where the transactions of its 
members are scraped together^ and prepared for being inaccu- 
rately printed, is, in the genuine dialect of tradesraen^ deno- 
minated ' Philosophical Hall.' " 

" We have dwelt longer upon this article than its merits jus- 
tify, for the purpose of stating and exemplifying a most curi-' 
ous and unaccountable fact — the scarcity of all but mercantile 
and agricultural talents in the 7iew xvorld^'^ 

3, The American work that next attracted the attention of 
our patrons, happened to be from the pen of a minister pleni- 
potentiarj' of the United States on the continent of Europe, 
the son of the American President. These qualities of the 
author, although they did not entitle him to deference as such, 
yet gave him claims to some particular personal favour and 
respect, from critics of the whig school, and of the bon-tou 
of European society. And he would have every right to ex- 
pect the most indulgent dispositions for his work, if, compos- 
ed of sketches which were reluctantly permitted to go before 
the American public in the pages of an American periodical 
paper, without ulterior destination, it had taken the shape of 
I a distinct \olume, through the cupidity of a London booksel- 
ler ; — if at the same time it was altogether free from preten- 
sions, and professedly limited to certain heads of observation, 
upon which accurate information might be of particular utility 
to his countrymen. The *' Letters from Silesia" of Mr. John 
Quincy Adams, to which it will be understood that I have 
been referring, were attended with these circumstances appa- 
rent upon the face of the volume into which they were col- 
lected. I will venture to affirm, moreover, that they possess 
If much absolute, intrinsic merit; that they are greatly above 
, the common standard of applauded English tours, and would 
\ have been declared creditable in all respects, had they been 
the production of an Englishman in a similar station. But the 
Edinburgh Review was as ungracious and wayward in this 
; instance, as in that of the American Philosophical Society. It 

* Compare this with the quotations in p. 218, 



UUSTILIXrES OF THE 

not only launched into broad generalities, and drew lar-fetched 
' analogies, to decry the work of Mr. Adams, but was at much 
pains to disparage his understanding and feelings ; and turned 
aside from the only proper subject of animadversion, to carp 
and sneer at the studies and mind of his country. These as- 
sertions might be the more strikingly illustrated here, did not 
the same tone and design pervade nearly the whole of the arti- 
cle in question ; at the same time that the critics cannot effec- 
tually conceal the sense, which they really entertain, of the 
merits of the Letters. A few excerpts from the article will 
be enough for the occasion. 

" It may appear somewhat hard to subject a work which 
does not offend by any pretensions to a comparison with the 
excellent standards of its kind ; but when we held this work in 
our hands, we could not help thinking of the American Presi- 
dency, and of the state of learning in that powerful and pros- 
perous commonwealth." 

" Although this author is neither lively nor very instructive, 
he shows some qualities which makes him a tolerable companion 
for a very short tour.''''^*'-^ The feelings of Mr. Adams about 
his native country more resemble the loyal acquiescence of a 
subject, than the personal interest and ardour of a republi- 
can."**" His style is, in general, very tolerable English, which, 
for American composition^ is no moderate praise."**" A spu- 
rious dialect, it is probable, will prevail even at the court and 
in the Senate of the United States, until that great common- 
wealth shall become opulent enough to break more distinctly 
into classes," &c. 

At the appearance of another American work of the highest 
possible interest and elevation as to the sul)ject, and proceeding 
from the firstlaw-dignitary of the American republic, not more 
respectable by his exalted station, thf.n by his general talents 
and private virtues — I mean the Life of Washington by Chief 
Justice Marshall — a fair opportunit)^ was afforded the Edin- 
burgh illuminati, to resist " the impertinence and vulgar inso- 
lence," and the " bitter sneering" of the ministerial party with 
respect to American concerns, by the force of example, in a 
generous exposition of the merits which they might discover ' 
in the performance ; a scrupulous abstinence from harsh and I 
supererogatory reflections on the author or his country, and' I 
a commemoration of those traits in the American revolu-~ 
tion, which distinguish it as the purest and noblest among 
the most important and celebrated in the history of the world. 
Nothing would have seemed more remote from probability, 
than that the disciples of Fox could, on the occasion of re- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. iil 

viewing an authentic biography of Washington, labour nuilnly Si-C. \ 
to appear smart and knowing, at the expense of the nation v-^^^-^ 
which had produced this model of heroes, and even insult the 
faithfiJ and unassuming biographer, who had been his com- 
panion in arms, had enjoyed his intimate friendship, and 
shared with him the labours and honours of his civil adminis- 
tration. Whether they pursued so unworthy a course, and 
how far they improved the opportunity above mentioned, to the 
very reverse of the proper ends, may be ascertained by the fol- 
lowing short extracts from the article under consideration. 

" Mr. Marshall must not promise himself a reputation com- 
mensurate with the dimensions of his work." 

" Mr. Chief Justice Marshall preserves a most dignified 
and mortifying silence regarding every particular of Washing- 
ton's private life, &c. Mr. Marshall may be assured, that 
what passes with him for dignity, will, by his reader, be pro- 
nounced dullness and frigidity." 

" The Speeches in this w^ork display great commercial 
knowledge, and a keen st}'le of argument — but oratory is not 
to be looked for in a country which has none of the kindred 
arts. All the specimens of American eloquence grievously 
sin against the canons of taste." 

" A more diffuse and undiscriminating narrative we haye 
seldom perused. It is deficient in almost every thing that con- 
stitutes historical excellence^'' &c. &c. 

This last stricture upon the narrative is followed immedi- 
ately by the observation — " It displays industry, good sense, 
and, so far as we can judge, laudable impartiality ; and the 
style, though neither elegant nor impressive, is yet, upon the 
whole, clear and manly." No ingenuity but that of the Edin- 
burgh critics, would be adequate to explain, how^ a narrative 
acknowledged to possess these qualities — which Blair indicates 
" as the primary qualities required in a good historian" — 
eould yet be justly proclaimed "deficient in almost everv 
thing that constitutes historical excellence." 

They are careful, in the abundance of their tenderness for 
America, to note, as they proceed with Judge Marshall, " the 
ludicrous proposition of her Congress to declare herself the 
most enlightened nation on the globe." This taunt had been 
so often in the mouth of the party stigmatized for an " odious, 
miserable, vulgar spirit of abuse against America," that the 
repetition of it by her friends, can be accounted for, only by 
its egregious pleasantry. I propose to enquire into its justice 
hereafter, and hope to render this point at least doubtful. To- 
wards the conclusion of the article on the Life of Washington, 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

there is this invidious remark : " We think it a pretty strong 
proof of the poverty of the literary attainments of America, 
that she has not been able to tell the story of her own revolu- 
tion, and to pourtray the character of her hero and sage, in 
language worthy such subjects." 

I do not mean to affirm that the story of our revolution has [ 
been told absolutely well by Marshall, or by Ramsay, whose 
Life of Washington is so unceremoniously consigned by the 
Scottish reviewers to the circulating libraries. Ramsay's His- 
tory of the American Revolution, which, it is probable, they 
liad never deigned to open, is, however, a respectable pro- 
duction in all points of view ; quite equal, as regards literary 
execution, to any historical essay respecting the aft'airs of 
England for the last century, and superior, as regards the au- 
thenticity of materials, and opportunities of knowledge. The 
Somervilles, the Enticks, the Belshams, the Russels, the 
Adolphus', the Giffords, the Biglands, are certainly below 
the level of Ramsay. 

To no people whatever can we apply more exactly, than to 
the American, the observation which I have quoted from the 
Edinburgh Review, that " among them the few who write 
bear no comparison to the many who read." According to 
the drift of the Review in making this observation, it would 
be unjust to declare the poverty of the literary attainments of 1 
America, on the ground that she has not yet produced a first : 
rate history of her revolution ; as, in point of fact, nothing can i 
be more unfounded than the allegation. We are told by a t 
Scottish authority, Blair, that the island of Britain, was not 
eminent for its historical productions, till within a few )'ears 
prior to the time at which he wrote ; that, during a long pe- 
riod, English historical authors were little more than dull com- 
pilers^ when at length the distinguished names of Hume, Ro- 
bertson, and Gibbon, raised the British character in that spe- 
cies of writing.* Now, if the logic of the Edinburgh Review, 
in reference to America, be adopted — if the circumstance of 
our not having told well the story of our revolution be " a 
pretty strong proof of the poverty of our literary attain- 
ments," we have, in the statement of Blair, " pretty strong 
proof" that Great Britain laboured under the same reproach 
until the middle of the eighteenth century. And the ignomi- 
ny would be tenfold, considering the superior advantages of 
her situation for centuries before that period. The absence 
of historians of the highest order is, certainly, the last defect 



* Lectures on Rhetoric. — Lecture 36. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

m our literature to be censured by a nation whose historical SEC 
authors were but dull compilers^ so long after she had the full *>-^' 
enjoyment of all those facilities to perfection in the arts of 
composition, which the Edinburgh Review has justly stated to 
be necessarily wanting to a new countr}^* 

There is no part of the matter introduced into the life of 
Washington ; there are none of the " provincial documents" 
with which it is peevishly said to be loaded, that are not in- 
teresting and important to the American public ; and for this 
public the work was chiefly intended. It became, inevitably, 
a History of the American Revolution, not only on account of 
the connexion, more or less immediate, of the hero, Avith all 
the great occurrences of the drama, but from the tenor of his 
manuscripts upon which it was composed, and which the 
biographer was bound to turn to the fullest account. Its bulk 
is not, thei'efore, a well-grounded objection; or might, at least, 
have found indulgence with those, who could not have been 
ignorant of the more inordinate size of Clarendon's History of 
the Rebellion; Roscoe's Life of Leo X; Gilford's Life of 
Pitt; Fra-Paolo's History of the Council of Trent; Guicciar- 
dini's History, and many other similar works of great ce- 
lebrity, of which the subjects are of less real importance and. 
[dignity, and extend through no greater portion of time. But, 
Ithe true, and principally, exceptionable feature in Marshall's 
[volumes, is one which has never, as far as I know, been 
lobserved at home, and which the foreign critics, had they 
Ibeen able to perceive it, would have been careful not to sig- 
Inalize. He has given, as historical evidence, determining a 
[general phasis of the revolution, the desponding representa- 
Itions made by Washington in his private letters to Congress ; 
[representations which took their hue as well from the design 
[of the writer to stimulate that body, to the utmost pitch of a 
Particular kind of effort, as from the engrossing disquietudes 
latural and common with the firmest minds, under the imme- 
jiiate pressure, or apprehension, of heavy embarrassments. 
Irhe biographer has so exhibited the difficulties inherent in our 
[defence, and the momentary impressions which their emergence 
[iiade upon the Commander in chief, as to lend much colour 
m. reason at least, to the derogatory suggestion of the Edin- 
irgh Review — " He must be blind who does not see iii this 
Istory^ that all the array of American patriotism would have 



Ben uiteny unac 


)ie, DU 


t lor me mc 


apacn 


y oi ner 


enemy, 


f 

|Vol. I.— Ff 




* Note P,. 









HOSTILITIES OF THE 

secure her independence." The main idea is certainly coun 
' tenanced by some of the letters of Washington; but it is not 
therefore, the less unsound, or easy of refutation upon a 
comprehensive and critical survey of the whole history of 
the revolution. No British writer will assert, or admit, thir 
the success of the British forces under Wolfe, in the memor 
able siege of Quebec, was owing to the " incapacity of the 
enemy:" But the tone of the first despatches of that intrepic' 
leader to the British secretary of state, is quite as despondinj:^ 
as the private communications of Washington to the Americr. 
congress, and would equally, upon the principles of the Ediii 
burgh Review, warrant such a conclusion. The British pol' 
tician of an enlarged and sagacious mind, who will look int^. 
the parliamentary history for the three first years of our strug- 
gle, will find there, in the facts and views presented by th»i 
whig orators, enough to convince him of the error of any hy- 
pothesis, implying, that we could not have worked out our poli- 
tical salvation, but for the mismanagement of the British minis- 
try, and the aid of the French court. 

4. The life of Washington having failed to draw the Edin- 
burgh wits from the course, to appearance so little in unison 
with their professions, which was pursued with tl^c letters of i 
Mr. Adams, we cannot be surprised if the Columbiad of Bar- 
low wrought no better effect. It seems to have been committed : 
to the Momus of the fraternity for special diversion. Ac- 
cordingly, the American Epic is introduced, with refined: 
humour, as " the goodly firstling of the infant muse of Ame- 
rica;" and, by way, no doubt, of manfully resisting ministe- 
rial impertinence, and generously soothing the feelings of thq 
poet's countrymen for the sentence which it might be necessa 
to pass upon his work — the reviewer immediately salutes the 
as follows : — " These federal republicans are very much sue; 
people, we suppose, as the modem traders of Liverpool, Ma; 
Chester, or Glasgow. They have a little Latin whipped in 
them in their youth, and read Shakspeare, Pope and Miltoi^ 
as well as bad English novels, in their days of courtship am 
leisure." .;l 

I cannot undertake to repeat the exquisite jokes of this 
article on the Columbiad — such, for instance, as the oi^ 
about " those fiuent and venerable personages, the rivers Vo^ 
tomak and Delaware," nor the many quips respecting th« 
American diction ; but it is proper to quote one or two mor< 
phrases, to illustrate the obstinacy of that unlucky mood whicl 



BliiTlSIl KEVIKVVb. 

« 

would be ever at variance with the most magnanimous de- 
signs of patronage. 

" We have often heard it reported that our ti-ansatlantic 
brethren were beginning to take it amiss that their language 
should still be called English. As this is the first specimen 
which has come into our hands of any considerable work i7i 
the American tongue, it may be gratifying to our philological 
readers," &c. 

" These republican literati seem to make it a point of con- 
science to have no aristocratical distinctions — even in their 
vocabulary : they think one word just as good as another, pro- 
iided the meaning be clear," &c. 

Aspersions upon the capacity and literature of the Ame- 
rican people at large, might have been spared by " well-wish- 
ers," even in a criticism upon an American work. But it 
would seem still more incongruous and wanton, to hold them 
up to contempt, in reviewing a mere book of travels in Ame- 
rica, declared, at the same time, to be in the last degree incre- 
dible and despicable. This, however, is done in the account 
of Ashe's Travels, in the 30th number of the Edinburgh Jour- 
nal; where, while the reviewer affects to reprobate and de- 
ride the tales of the wretched imposter and swindler,* he lends 
himself to his malignant purpose. It is from them that the 
magnates of Scottish literature take occasion to flout and de- 
cry a nation of kinsmen in the following language : 

" We could just as readily believe that the orations of 
Sheridan are written by a Philadelphia-vian, as that the 



• * Dr. Drake relates, in his "Picture of Cincinnati," the following anec- 
dote of Ashe. 

" In the years 1802-3, Dr. William Goforth, with an ardour of curiosity 
that deserved a better reward than awaited his exertions, dug- up in Ken- 
tucky, and transported to Cincinnati, several wagg-on loads of Mammoth 
bones. They were, by the Doctor and George Turner, one of the members 
of the American Philosophical Society, examined attentively, and supposed 
to be the remains of no less than six non-descript quadrupeds, most of them 
gigantic. Among the rest, some of the bones of the rhinoceros were thought 
to be ascertained. Judge Turner made accurate drawings of the most 
curious of those fossils, but has been so unfortunate as to lose them. 

" In the spring of the year 1803, the Doctor formed the design of trans- 
porting these bones to the Atlantic states. They reached Pittsburgh, and 
were there stored. Early in 1806, Professor Barton made an application to 
purchase them; but at that time they had attracted the attention of a foreign 
swindler, named Thomas Arville, alias Jlshe, who obtained permission of the 
owner to ship them to Europe, for exhibition ; since which they have not 
been heard of. To this personal injury of a worthy individual, the miscreant 
has since added a libel on the American people." 



HOSTILITIES OF TFfE 

speech of an American orator is the work of a Scotch re-. 
porter." 

" It is no doubt true, that Amei'ica can produce nothing to 
bring her intellectual efforts into any sort of co)npariso7i with 
that of Europe. These republican states have never passed 
the limits of humble mediocrity^ either in thought or expression. 
Noah Webster, we are afraid, still occupies the first place in 
criticism, Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow in poetry, and j 
Mr. Justice Marshall in history : and, as to the physical sci- 11 
ences, we shall merely observe, that a little elementary trea- 
tise of botany, appeared in 1803; and that this paltry contri- 
bution to natural history is chronicled, by the latest American 
"historian, among the remarkable occurrences since the revo- 
lution. In short, federal America has done nothing, either to 
extend, diversify, or embellish the sphere of human know- 
ledge. Though all she has written were obliterated, from the 
records of learning, there would, if we except the works of 
Franklin, be no positive diminution, either of the useful or the 
agreeable. The destruction of her whole literature would not 
occasion so much regret as we feel for the loss of a few leaves 
from an ancient classic." 

" But, notwithstanding all this, we really cannot agree with 
Mr. Ashe, in thinking the Americans absolutely incapable^ or 
degenerate ; and are rather inclined to think, that when their 
neighboui"hood thickens, and their opulence ceases to depend 
on exertion, they will show something of the same talents to 
which it is a part of our duty to do justice among ourselves. 
And we are the more inclined to adopt this yauoz^ra^/e opinion J 
from considering, that her history has already furnished occa 
sions for the display of talents of a high order; and that, ini 
the ordinary business of government, she displays no mea: 
share of ability and eloquence." 

" That the Americans have great and peculiar faults, both 
in their manners and in their morality, we take to be undeni-j 
able. Their manners, for the most part, are those of a scat« 
tered, migratory, but speculating people; and there will be ni 
great amendment until their population becomes more dense 
and more settled in its habits. As the population becomes conl 
centered, and the spirit of adventure is deprived of its objects' 
the sense of honour will improve with the importa7ice of cha- 
racter.'^ (No. 30.)* 

The relish for the topic of the insignificance of American 
literature, and for the waggish citation of the names of some 



See Note Q. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

of the American literati, proved so keen and lasting, that we SE(. 
have been recently treated with them again. What archness, '^^^ 
sagacity, knowledge, and despatch in the following passage of 
the article on the travels of Fearon — that rightful successor of 
Ashe, worthy of exciting the same strain in the reviewer! 

"Literature the Americans have none — ^no native literature, 
I mean. It is all imported. They had a Franklin, indeed ; 
and may afford to live for half a century on his fame. There 
is, or was, a Mr. Dwight, who wrote some poems ; and his 
baptismal name was Timothy.* There is also a small accoicnt 
of Virginia by Jefferson, and an epic by Joel Barlow — and 
some pieces of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should 
the Americans write books, when a six weeks passage brings 
them, in their own tongue, our sense^ science, and genius, in 
bales and hogsheads. Prairies, steam-boats, grist-mills, are 
their natural objects ybr centuries to come. Then, when they 
have got to the Pacific ocean — epic poems, plays, pleasures of 
memory, and all the elegant gratifications of an ancient peo- 
ple who have tamed the wild earth, and set down to amuse 
themselves /" 

5. The Edinburgh Review, preluded, as we have seen, 
w ith apologising for our supposed deficiencies in literature, 
but quickly fell into the habit of emblazoning them to the ut- 
most, whenever America happened to be in question, even 
as to matters entirely distinct. A similar course has been 



* Dr. Dwight seems to have obtained a permanent niche in the memory 
of the critic. Thus we have, on another occasion. " The poetry of Dr. . 
Dwight is evidently the growth of a country whei-e only the coarser sorts of 
industry yet flourish." (No. 29.) Now, considering this utter unworthi- 
ness of the Connecticut poet, it is rather extraordinary that Darwin should 
have ascribed to his Conquest of Canaan " much fine versification." (Bota- 
nic Garden, note, line 364, part I.) ; and that Campbell, whom the review- 
ers have placed above all the bards of the age, should have borrowed pas- 
sages from his religious epic to adorn a compilation of the beauties of Eng- 
lish poetry. In introducing these passages, Campbell remarks, indeed, — 
" Of this American poet I am sorry to be able to give the British reader no 
account. I believe his personal history is as little known as his poetry, on 
this side of the Atlantic." But, truly, the British reader might justly com- 
plain ; for. Dr. Dwight made so conspicuous a figure in the affairs of New 
England, and was so diffusively and advantageously famous throughout this 
country, that it would not have been very difficult to come at his personal 
history, even in London. The President of Yale College, the second in the 
Union in extent and consideration ; an eminent divine, a politician of great 
influence, a voluminous, popular and able writer, could remain unknown 
only to those who were entirely ignorant of American affaifs, 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

T I. pursued by the critics in relation to our moral condition, man- 
"^►^ ners, and general dispositions. Their excuses for their " kins- 
men of the west," on these heads, have almost always had, 
more or less, the air of mockery, and carried a sharper sting 
than their open defamation. The following passages are won- 
derfully kind and encouraging, and furnish a specimen of the 
sapient, fond discussions about us in the mother country. 

" Why the Americans are disliked in this country we have 
never been able to understand ; for most certainly they resem- 
ble us far more than any other nation in the world. They are 
brave and boastful, and national and factious, like ourselves ; 
— about as polished as 99 in 100 of our own countrymen in the 
upper ranks — and at least as vioral and -well educated in the 
loiver. Their virtues are such as we ought to admire — for 
they are those on which we value ourselves most highly : and 
their very faults seem to have some claim to our indulgence, 
since they are those with which we also are reproached by 
third parties." (1814). 

*' The complaint respecting America is, that there are no 
people of fashion — that their column still wants its Corinthian 
capital — or, in other words, that those who are rich and idle, 
have not yet existed so long, or in such numbers, as to have 
brought to full perfection that system of ingenious trifling, and 
elegant dissipation, by means of which it has been discovered 
that wealth and leisure may be most agreeably disposed of. 
Admitting the fact to be so, and in a country where there is no. 
court, no nobility, and no monument or tradition of chivalrous 
usages — and where, moreover, the greatest number of thosei 
who are rich and powerful have raised themselves to that, 
eminence by mercantile industry, we really do not see how 
it could well be otherwise — we could still submit, that this i 
no lawful cause either for national contempt, or for national, 
hostility. It is a peculiarity in the structure of society among! 
that people, which, we take it, can only give offence to thei: 
visiting acquaintance; and, while it does us no sort of hannj 
while it subsists, promises, we think, very soon to disappeai 
altogether, and no longer to afflict even our imaginations, 
The number of individuals born to the enjoyment of herediij 
tary wealth is, or at least was, daily increasing in that couil*'| 
try ; and it is impossible that their multiplication, — with all 
the models of European refinement before them, and all the 
advantages resulting from a free government, and a general 
system of good education— should fail, within a very short 
period, to give birth to a better tone of conversation and society^ 
and to mariners more dignijied and refined. Unless we are very 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

much misinformed indeed, the symptoms of such a change may SEC 
already be traced in their. cities. Their youths of fortune ui- '^-^ 
ready travel overall the countries of Europe for their im- 
provement ; and specimens are occasionally met with even in 
these islands, which, with all our prejudices, we must admit, 
would do no discredit to the best blood of the land from which 
ihey originally sprung."* 

There would have been too much of consistency in preserv- 
ing, on all occasions, the condescension exerted in these pas- 
sages. The tone of greeting is not so mincing or comfortable 
in the following extracts : 

" The public functionaries in America are so poorly provided, 
that no prosperous counsellor, for instance, will accept of the 
office of judge, and few men of abilities will dedicate them to 
so unprofitable a task as the management of public affairs. — 
Their legislature is therefore deficient both in talent and au- 
thority'', and she has already experienced more than one shock 
ft-om the in-egular impulse of that ambition and talent for 
which no adequate recompense has been provided within the 
pale of her constitution." (No. 28). 

" The Americans are all jealous republicans, and all out- 
rageously proud of their constitution, and vain of their coun- 
try. This passion exists, in America, in a degree that is both 
offensive and ridiculous to strangers !" (No. 40). 

" They, of the western country, are hospitable to strangers, 
because they are seldom troubled with them; and because theij 
have always plenty of mai'ze and smoked hams. \ Their hospi- 
tality, too, is always accompanied with impertinent questions ; 
and a disgusting display of national vanity." (No. 13). 

" There are no very prominent men at present in America ; 
at least, none ■whose fame is strojig enough for exportation, 
Monroe is a man of plain, unaffected good sense. Jefferson, 



» No. 40. 

f The poor Irish, at least, are placed out of the reach of so chai'itable an 
explanation; and if the people of England are hospitable, it is not cer- 
tainly from this cause. I take the following' from Bell's Weekly Messenger 
for Feb. 7th, 1819. 

" On Friday a donation of the Regent gave cheerfulness to the lowlv 
habitations of the indigent of Brighton. A large quantity of prime beef, to 
the value of one hundred pounds, by royal command, was distributed 
bo the industrious poor with families, in proportions according to their 
number and necessities, by the parochial officers. The zvido-ws' and the 
'orphans' tears bore testimony of the gratitude felt, and expressions of thank- 
^ness, directed toivards their beloved and gcnersvs benefactor, wer- ^r • ■ 
fj^sat." 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

rve believe^ is stiil alive; and has always been more rcmaika 
ble, perhaps^ for the early share he took in the formation ot 
the republic, than from any very predominant superiority oi 
understanding." (No. 61). 

It is well to be undecei\^ed, let the nature of the error be 
what it may. But the Americans had credulously imagined, 
that the fame of the military and naval commanders by whom 
the British were, during the last American war, " worsted in 
most of their naval encounters, and baffled in most of their 
enterprises by land,"* was " strong enough for exportation." 
They thought the same, with respect to those " statesmen, 
most of whom survive, by whom the affairs of the United 
States have been administered in times of great difficulty, with 
a forbearance, circumspection, and constancy, not surpassed 
in those commoiwealths who have been most justly renowned 
for the wisdom of their councils."! As regards Mr. Jeffer- 
son, it will not be deemed an unaccountable illusion in the 
Americans to have ascribed to him " a predominant superi- 
ority of understanding," Avhen it is recollected that they had 
read the following remarks in the article of the Edinburgh 
Review on Janson's Travels: " Mr. Janson drags individuals 
into ?iotice without ceremony. As for his endless invectives 
against Mr. Jefferson, they belong to another class of wrongs, 
and only obtain their share of the dignified contempt by which 
that eminently xvise ruler has consigned to oblivion all the 
spoken and written scurrility of his enemies.":j: While them- 
selves engaged in " dragging individuals into notice," the 
Scottish critics should not have forgotten the names of John f 
Adams, Ji^mes Madison, John Jay, Rufus King, Thomas j 
Pinckney, De Witt Clinton, John Quincy Adams, and even 
Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, all of whom, by a diligent per 
quisition, they could have ascertained to be still on the stage o 
life. Two of these at least, might be considered as prominent 
since they wrote the principal portion of the work called th 
Federalist, which the Scottish dispensers of renown hav^ 
themselves described as " a publication that exhibits an exten 
and precision of information, a profundity of research, and a: 
acuteness of understanding, which would Jiave done honour t] 
the most illustrious statesman of ancient or modern times."^,] 



* Edinburgh Review. — 1814. 
f Ibid. No. 61. Article on Universal Suffratje. 
T No. 29. 

§ No. 24. Article on Illllhouse's proposed amendment to the AmericaH 
Constitution, 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

In the number of this journal, the 61st, which tells us that SI 
we have no prominent men, it is obligingly said, " the Ameri- "^ 
cans are a very sensible, reflecting people, and have conducted 
their affairs extremely well:'''' but at the same moment the com- 
pliment is retracted, in a burst of spleen more violent and acrid, 
than any of the effusions of the Quarterly Review, which I 
shall soon be called to notice. 

" The great curse of America is the institution of slavery — 
of itself far more than the foulest blot upon their national 
character, and an evil which counterbalances all the excise- 
men, licensers, and tax-gatherers of England." 

" That slavery should exist among men who know the value 
of liberty, and profess to understand its principles, is the con- 
summation of xv'ickedness. E\^eiy American, who loves his 
country, should dedicate his whole life, and every faculty of 
his soul, to efface this foul stain from its character. If nations 
rank according to their wisdom and their virtue, -what right 
has the Amer'ican^ a scourger and murderer of slaves^ to com- 
pare himself with the least and the loxvest of the European na- 
tions ? much more with this great andhumane country^ where 
the greatest lord dare not lay a finger upon the meanest pea- 
sant ? What is freedom, where all are not free ? Where the 
greatest of God's blessings is limited, with impious caprice, 
to the colour of the body ? And these are the men who taunt 
the English with their corrupt parliament, with their buying 
and selling votes. Let the world judge which is the most 
liable to censure — we who, in the midst of our rottenness, have 
torji off the manacles of slaves all over the world^ or they who, 
with their idle purity, and useless perfection, have remained 
mute and careless, while groans echoed and whips clanked 
round the very walls of their spotless Congress. The existence 
of slavery tJi Afnerica is an atrocious crime^ with which no 
measures can be kept — for which her situation affords no apo- 
logy — which makes liberty itself distrusted, and the boast of it 
disgusting." 

6. It was, perhaps, known to the authors of the Review, that 
no small part of the American public, in spite of all that I have 
quoted from it of an earlier date, still credulously relied upon 
its general professions and character. They magnanimously 
determined at length, to dissipate the delusion, or conceived 
the project of putting it to the last test, by these fierce invec- 
tives. 

Vol. I.— Gg 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

I will discuss, in another place, the validity of the sweeping 
charges founded upon the existence of domestic slavery among 
us, my immediate object being little more than to exemplify 
the feeling, or the policy, of the leading journals of Great 
Britain. We may, however, delay awhile, to illustrate further 
the consistency and modesty of the Edinburgh critics. In the 
same article which contains the charges just mentioned, they 
write thus.' " Any person, with tolerable prosperity here in 
England, had better remain where he is. There are consi- 
derable evils, no doubt, in England; but it would be madness 
not to admit that it is, upon the whole, a very happy country." 
Now, it was only in the number of their journal immediately 
preceding, in the article on Birbeck's Travels, that we read the 
following language. 

" With all its excellencies, the English government is a most 
expensive one : protection to person and property is no where 
so dearly purchased; and the follies of the people, and the 
coiTuption of their rulers, have entailed such a load of debt 
upon us, that whoever prefers his own to any other country, as 
a place of residence, must be content to pay an enormous price 
for. the gratification of his wish. In truth, a temptation to 
emigrate is now held out to all persons of moderate fortune, 
which must, in very many cases, prove altogether irresistible. 
Nor can any thing be more senseless than the wonder testified 
by some zealous lovers of their native land, at any family of 
small income, seeking a more fruitful soil and a better climate, 
where half their means may not be seized to pay the state and 
the poor. Mr. Birbeck, as a moderate capitalist, and the 
father of a large family, may be justified in every point of view 
for leaving this country." 

In the last pages of the article on Bii'beck's Travels, it is 
elaborately maintained by the reviewer, that the American 
Union will continue : but, in the next number of the journal, 
we are told that " it is scarcely possible to conceive that such 
an empire as the American should very long remain undi- 
vided." The truly sound doctrine of the article on Birbeck 
furnishes the best answer to this assertion. It is as follows. 

" It might be proper, however, to consider the real ground of stability 
which the government of America possesses, before we decide in so positive 
a manner against it. There can be little doubt, that the whole question 
turns upon the difference of American and European societj', and the total 
want in the former, of that race of political characters which abounds in the 
latter. In America, all men have abundant occupation of their own, without 
thinking of the state. Every person is deeply interested, and perpetually 
engaged, in driving his trade, and cultivating his land : and little time is left 
to any one for thinking of state affairs, except as a subject of conversation. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

As a business they engage the attention of no one except the rulers of the SEC 
country : and even tliey keep the concerns of the public subordinate to their ,._^^ 
own. The governor of a state is generally a large land owner and farmer of 
his own ground. A foreign minister is the active member of a lucrative and 
laborious profession, quitting it for a few months, and returning to its gains 
and its toils when his mission is ended. The business of the senate occupies 
but a few weeks in the year ; and no man devotes himself so much to its 
duties, as to leave it doubtful to what class of the industrious community he 
properly belongs. The race of mere statesmen, so well known among us in 
the Old World, is wholly unknown in the New ; aiui until it springs up, even 
the foundations of a change cannot be considered as laid. The Americans 
no doubt are, like other freemen, decided partisans, and warm political com- 
batants; but what project or chance can counterbalance, in their eyes, the 
benefits conferred by the union, of cultivating their soil, and pursuing their 
traffic freely and gainfully, in their capacity of private individuals? A 
preacher of insurrection might safely be left with such personages as the 
Amei-ican farmers ; and until the whole frame of society alters, even a great 
increase of political characters will not enable those persons successfully to 
appeal to the bulk of the community, with the prospect of splitting tlie 
union. The cautious and economical character of the Federal Government 
seems admirably adapted to secure its hold over the affections of a rational 
and frugal people." 

The Edinburgh Review is, doubtless, the last quarter in 
which we are to look for proof of the assertions that England 
is " a very happy country, where all are free" — " a great and 
humane country, which has torn off the manacles of slaves all 
over the world." In the same article in which those assertions 
are made, we read that " a very disgusting feature in the pre- 
sent English government is its extreme timidit}', and the 
cruelt}'^ and violence to which its timidity gives birth;" that in 
government-cases the judges are not independent; that " the 
savage spectacle" is exhibited " of a poor wretch, perhaps a 
very honest m.an, contending in vain against the weight of an 
immense government, pursued by a zealous attorney, and 
sentenced, by some candidate, perhaps, for the favour of the 
crown, to the long miseries of the dungeon." On the point of 
Englands having "•' torn off the manacles of slaves all over the 
Avorld," the several articles of that journal concerning the 
condition of the blacks in the British West Indies, of the 
Hindoos, of the Irish Catholics, furnish an admirable com- 
mentary. The same number in which that glorious distinction 
is claimed for England, begins with an account of Mills' 
History of British India, and ends with a vicAV of the state of 
the Irish Catholics; wherein her millions of Irish and Indian 
subjects are represented as labouring under the most galling 
and withering tyranny. The language of the following passages, 
for instance, is tolerably significative, and has the advantage 
of being undeniably true. 



HOSTILITIES OF TIIF. 

r I. «» We find, at the very outset of the history of the East India Company as- 
-,_■ a governing body, a series of acts of treachery and unjust violence, such as 
it would not be easy to match in the annals of men whom we are accustomed 
to consider as tlie worst of tyrants." 

" We are accustomed to rate very highly the security which is derived 
from being governed by men having the advantages of English education 
and Enghsh feelings. But it affords a lesson of melancholy instruction as to 
the feebleness of this security, when we see gentlemen eminently possessed 
of these advantages, and placed far above the reach of want, ready to destroy 
the commerce of a great country, to break down the administration of 
justice, to oppress the people, to violate ti'eaties, to kindle a war, and to 
depose a monarch, their all}^ merely to secure to themselves the profits of 
an illegal traffic." 

" Such are the melancholy results of the attempts to improve the con- 
dition of Bengal, described not by inimical observers or severe judges, but 
by the magistrates who, from the prejudices of their situation, would be in- 
clined to behold every indication of improvement, under the auspices of a 
British administration, with a favoui'able eye. Every person of rank andi 
property reduced to the lowest condition, — the cultivator exposed to in- 
tolei-able exaction, — the courts of justice virtually closed against suitors,- 
the most terrible of crimes increased to that extent, that no security for] 
person or property can be said to exist, — minor offences not diminished,- 
dissoluteness of morals become more general, — and a police, of which th( 
vices render it, instead of a benefit, a pest to the country: these, according 
to the highest authorities, are the characteristics of that part of India, wher( 
our reforms have had the longest time to operate." 

" To this picture must those open their eyes, who have been consoling! 
themselves, on every act of aggression and conquest, however unjust ii 
itself, with the reflection that the extension of the British power was an ex- 
tension of benefits and of security to the natives. One advantage has certainly 
attended the introduction of an English administration : the direct oppression 
which the superiors exercised, as of right, over their inferiors is lessened ; but 
that oppression was much less terrible than the increased acts of violence 
and cruelty of the unlicensed plunderers who were kept in awe by the vigi 
lance of the former rulers; nor can the occasional acts of violence, on th( 
part of the native governments, towards its higher subjects, bear a compari- 
son with those regulations, which have produced a greater change in the 
landed property than was ever known before, and in a few years reduced 
the majority of the zemindars to distress and beggary." 

" The lawless habits of the people, in the ordinary and best state of thel 
interior of Ireland, and all tlie occasional disturbances of a more seriousi 
character, are to be traced to the system of law which has divided the in-j 
habitants of Ireland into a Protestant Oligarchy, administering in detail the! 
government of the country ovei* a Catholic multitude : — The one armed withV 
all sorts of arbitrary powers; the other excluded from the constitution, am' 
subjected to every species of penalties." 

" In all former times of peace, the establishment for Ireland has been 800( 
men. The number voted last year was 22,000. Besides the expense 
maintaining this extra number of 14,000 men, there is also the expense oj 
police establishments, prosecutions, and a variety of other charges, whichj^ 
grow out of the system of governing the people on the principle of exclusion 
from their civil rights. In the last year's public accounts, there is a charge 
of 38,952^. for police establishments in proclaimed districts; and another for 
12,000/. secret service, in detecting treasonable conspiracies." 

"In vain have the hands of government been strengthened in Ireland, 
and the terrors of its power let loose, in every fojvn of chdl proscription and 
military execution. The evil of an alienated population is not to be so over- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

mastered. They cannot love a constitution from which they are excluded, SEC 
nor venerate a law which withholds from tliem the rights which it secures v_^^ 
to the more favoured part of the population, by whom it is made and admi- 
nistered." 

With respect to the many hundred thousand blacks of the 
British West Indies, the manner in which their manacles have 
been " torn off" is sufficiently illustrated in the following 
passage, quoted by the Edinburgh Review, with full approba- 
tion, from a Report of the African Institution, for the year 
1815. " In what country, accursed with slavery, is this sink- 
ing fund of mercy, this favour of the laws to human redemp- 
tion, manumission^ taken away? Where, by an opprobrious 
reversal of legislative maxims, ancient and modern, do the 
lawgivers rivet, instead of relaxing, the fetters of private 
bondage, stand betvv^een the slave and the liberality of his 
master, by prohibiting enfranchisements, and labour as much 
as in them lies, to make that dreadful, odious state of man, 
w-hich they have formed, eternal? Shame and horror must 
not deter us from revealing the truth. It is in the dominions 
of Great Britain, This abuse has been reserved for assem- 
blies, convened by the British crown, and subject to the con- 
trol of Parliament." 

In the article on Birbeck, the negro-slavery of the United 
States is spoken of, and with great truth, as existing " in a 
form by far the most mitigated^'' and it is unanswerably asked. 

Who can compare the state of the slave in the sugar islands 
with that in North America?" In the article of the 50th 
number, on the general Registry of slaves, all idea of emanci- 
pating those of the British West Indies is peremptorily dis- 
claimed, in the name of the English abolitionists ', and the 
Reviewer adds, " Unprepared for freedom as the unhappy 
victims of our oppression and rapacity now are, the attempts 
to bestoxv it on them at once^ could only lead to their own aug-- 
mentedmisery^ and in'uolve both master and slave in one common 
ruin.'''' The sagacity which provided this just reflection in 
favour of Great Britain and the West India legislature, might 
have discovered the same apology for the southern states of 
America, and arrested the unqualified sentence pronounced 
upon them. 

In truth, all this sudden pother about the bare continued 
existence of domestic slavery in this country, may be at once 
ifiderstood to be mere parade, if not artifice, on a reference 
;o the tenor of the article in the first number of the Review, 
concerning the Sugar Colonies. The object of that article 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

was to show, that " the subdivision of the negroes' of the 
' West Indies, under the power of masters armed with abso- 
lute power," had become an indispensable policy for Great 
Britain; that "the regulation of the treatment of the slaves" 
ought to be left to the colonial legislatures ; and, principally, 
that Great Britain should assist the consular government of 
France (alias Bonaparte) in the attempt to reduce the negroe^ 
of St. Domingo to their previous state of bondage; to " their 
cane-pieces, coffee-grounds and spice-walks." The cham- 
pions of universal emancipation, who now, in the fervour oi 
their apostleship, proclaim it to be " the consummation of 
wickedness," on our part, to tolerate even the existence of 
slavery in our southern states, had, then, so little presentiment 
of their vocation, or susceptibility to the impressions whicli 
slavery, " in the most mitigated form," makes upon them 
now, as they contemplate this republic, that they were eager , 
for its revival in its severest form, and on a very extensive] 
scale, in St. Domingo ; because the independence of the ne- ;j 
groes of that island seemed to threaten the security of the 
trade which supplied in part " our (the British) fleet witl 
seamen and our (the British) exchequer with millions." Tht 
article in question calculates sanguinely and argumentativel}" 
the advantage secured to Great Britain, on the supposition J 
that " France had completely succeeded in her colonial mea-'| 
sures, and, xvith xvhatever perfidy and cruelty^ restored the 
slavery of the negroes." And it is curious to remark the lan- 
guage held in relation to the beings, for whose fate xu'ith us^ so 
profound and resentful a compassion is now expressed. 

"The negroes are truly the Jacobins of the West Indi 
islands — thev are the anaixhists, the terrorists, the domestic 
enenxy. Against them it becomes rival nations to combine, 
and hostile governments to coalesce. If Prussia and Austria 
felt their existence to depend on an union against the revolu- 
tionary arms in Europe, (and who does not lament that the 
coalition was not more firm and enlightened?) a closer all 
ance is imperiously recommended to France, and Britain, ar 
Spain, and Holland, against x\\6 common enemy of civiliz 
society, the destrover of the European name in the new world 

" We have the greatest sympathy for the unmerited suff< 
ings of the unhappy negroes; we detest the odious traffic whi 
has poured her myriads into the Antilles ; but rue must be per- 
mitted to feel some tenderness for our European brethren^ al- 
though they are xvhite and civilized, and to deprecate that incon- 
sistent spirit of e<2nting philanthropy, xvhich in Europe is 07ih 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

I 

:.\cuc-d by the ivrongs or miseries of the poor and the projltgate; SEC 
ixnd^ on the other side of the Atlantic^ is never ivarmed but to- ^-^* 
wards the savage^ the 7nulatto^ and the slave I! 

" Admitting all that has been urged against the planters and 
their African providers, we are much of the opinion which 
Lord Bacon has expressed in the following sentence: — ' It is 
the sinfuUest thing in the world to forsake a plantation once 
in forwardness; for, besides the dishonour, it is the guiltiness 
of the blood of many commiserable persons.' " 

The Edinburgh Review is as much at variance with itself, 
touching the points of the felicity and humanity of Great Bri- 
tain, as in that of her being the dispenser of universal fx'eedom. 
As far as the acknowledgment of overspreading pauperism 
may be considered as an acknowledgment of national wretch- 
edness, we have it in repeated instances. In the 5Sth number, 
this evil is represented as " the menacing hydra who swells 
so gigantically and stalks so largely over the face of the British 
land." That this hydra had left the land, or had ceased to 
swell and expatiate, when the critic wrote the phrase " it 
would be madness not to admit England to be a very happy 
country," no one acquainted with the progress of her affairs 
could be bold enough to affirm. With respect to her humanity, 
it is strangely emblazoned in the abstracts and opinions which 
the Edinburgh Review has given, of the resistance to the abo- 
lition of the slave trade; of her administration of Ireland, and 
India; of her penal code; of the state of her public charities, 
ler prisons, her hospitals, and of the character of the ministry 
ivhom she suffers to remain in power. A single passage, which 
[ take from their volume for 1817, may serve to show how 
pe critics vindicate, in the detail, the reputation of superior 
umanity which they assert in the gross, for their country : — 
" The condition of pauper lunatics, in public institutions, 
shown sufficiently, by what has been already said. At pri- 
ate mad-houses, the management of the poor was no better. 
\x Talbot's, Bethnal Green, where the number was 230, and 
Rhodes's, Bethnal Green, where 275 paupers were crowd- 
[d together, there is proof of circumstances that deserve se- 
re censure. At Miles, Worston, of 486 patients, 300 were 
pt wholly without medical attention to their mental disorder. 
V^e case is nearly the same throughout the xvhole of England; 
ad the sheriff of Edinburghshire states, that " in no instance 
id he find a pauper lunatic treated with kindness ; in several, 
arked inhumanity was observable." 

In remarking, in reference to the United States, that " it is 
i)t pleasant to emigrate to a country of changes and revolu- 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

f !• tion^'' the same critics add, to enforce their observation — 
"^ *' then we have a parliiment of inestimable value." In con- 
firmation of this discovery, I will appeal to the authority of a 
late leader of the party to which they belong, — a man whose 
superlative judgment and candour they have celebrated with- 
out bounds. 

Sir S. Romilly said — *" Let us recollect that we are the parliament which, 
for the first time in the history of this country, twice suspended the habeas 
corpus act in a period of profound peace. Let us recollect that we are the 
confiding parliament which entrusted his majesty's ministers with the au- 
thority emanating from that suspension, in expectation that when it was no 
longer wanted, they would call parliament together to surrender It into 
their hands — which those ministers did not do, although they subsequently 
acknowledged that the necessity for retaining that power had long ceased 
to exist. Let us recollect that we are the same parliament which consented 
to indemnify his majesty's ministers for the abuses and violations of the law 
of wliich they had been guilty, in the exercise of the authority vested in 
them. Let us recollect that we are the same parliament which refused to 
inquire into the grievances stated in the numerous petitions and memorials 
with which our table groaned — that we turned a deaf ear to the complaints 
of the oppressed — that we even amused ourselves with their sufferings. 
Let us recollect that M'e are the same parliament which sanctioned the 
use of spies and informers by the British government — debasing that gov- 
ernment, once so celebrated for good faith and honour, into a condition 
lov/er in character than that of the ancient French police. Let us recollect 
that we are the same parliament which sanctioned the issuing of a circular 
letter to the magistracy of the country, by a secretary of state, urging them 
to hold persons to bail for libel before an indictment was found. Let us 
recollect that we are the same parliament which sanctioned tlie sending out 
of the opinion of the king's attorney-general and the king's solicitor-general, 
as the law of the land. Let us recollect that we are the same parliament 
which sanctioned the shutting' of the ports of this once hospitable nation to 
unfortunate foreigners flying from persecution in their own country. This, 
Sir, is what we have done; and we are about to crown all by the present 
most violent and most unjustifiable act (the alien act). Who our successors 
may be I know not ; but God grant that this country may never see another 
parliament as regardless of the liberties and rights of the people, and of the 
principles of general justice, as this padiament has been !" 

As an American, I may be excused, if, yielding to the pro- 
vocation of such language as that of the Edinburgh Review, 
I dwell a little longer, in this place, upon the evidence of the 
more perfect freedom and tender humanity of Great Britain, 
which is to be collected from other sources. It has been the 
uniform cry of the leading members of the opposition in par^ 
liament, as well as of the Scottish journal, that the ministry^*! 
could at any time find a majority to enable them to suspend 
the habeas corpus act: and the same authorities have concurred 
in the assertions that when the habeas corpus act was suspend- 



* Debate of June 15, 1818, House of Commops. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

ccl, there was no difference between the government of Great SEC 
Britain and the rule of the most despotic sovereign ; that the 
power which a minister had of committing to prison on such 
occasions, was quite as great and as dangerous, as that of the 
lettres de cachet^ so celebrated in the annals of France. The 
last British parliament, dissolved in 1818, suspended the ha- 
beas corpus twice — in a time of profound peace with foreign 
nations. Lord Castlereagh averring on the second occasion, 
that unless the measure were adopted, " a bloody and disas- 
trous catastrophe was to be expected." 

The state of things during the suspension will be made suffi- 
ciently known, by a few quotations from the debates in parlia- 
ment on the subject, and will show the real value of the boast 
for England, that " the greatest lord dare not lay a finger upon 
the meanest peasant." 

Lord Holland said (Feb. 19th, 1818) "that forty British subjects had beeii, 
during the suspension of 1817, immured in prisons and discharged without 
any trial." 

Lord A. Hamilton said (Feb. 10th, 1818) " that government had avowed- 
ly employed spies and informers,* who, it was generally admitted, had, in 
many cases, fomented the evil which it was the object to counteract. And 
he begged now to notice the lamentable condition to which suspected per- 
sons, innocent or guilty, were thus reduced in this frank and /ree country. 
Any man was liable, on the information of these fomenting instead of de- 
tecting spies — out of malice or to earn their pay — to betaken by secret 
warrant — to secret imprisonment — to distant gaol — all access denied him 
• for fear of tampering' — a law officer to threaten or bribe — some accom- 
plice to give agreeable evidence — under such circumstances, what chance had 
lie of bare justice, much less of successfully encountering liis enemies. Such 
proceedings were in direct opposition to all that they had been accustomed 
to venerate in the British constitution." 

Mr. Fazakerley said (Feb. 11th, 1818) " that during the suspension of the 
habeas corpus, the powers with which it invested government were by no 
incans sparingly used. The gaols were filled with suspected individuals, 
appreliended probably on the information of spies; and many persons were 
thus, in all probability, made the victims of the crimes of others. The va- 
rious provinces witnessed the novel sight, of state prisoners, itinerant state 
prisoners, carried about from one place to another. Not that alone — they 
6a\v them loaded with irons and placed in close confinement." 

Sir F. Burden observed (March, 11th 1818) "that no contradiction had 
^een attempted of the allegation, tliat men who had not been found guilty 
of any offence — who were merely accused, and, it was to be presumed, 
iirrongfully, as they were subsequently discharged, — were confined in soli- 
tary cells, and loaded with irons, in one instance two of these unfortunate 



The Earl of Westmoreland, one of the ministry, observed, in the House 

tif Lordsj 5th March, 1818, " that spies and informers had, from the earli- 
;st periods of history, been the objects of popular dislike. But he believed 
hat no government had ever existed by which they had not been used, 
ind that hardly any conspiracy or treason had ever been detected and pu- 
lisHed without their aid." 

Vol. I.— Hh 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

individuiils were cliained together, compelled mutually to bear all the in- 
firmities (;f human nature ; a most inhuman practice, and one to which a t} - 
rant of" old is said to have resoi-ted as to a refinement of cruelty." 

Sir S. Rouiilly referred to " the petitions of the two booksellers at War- 
rington, who being charged with no higher oftence than the publishing of 
a libel, had had their houses searched, their books and papers seized, and 
had been themselves loaded with irons like felons, and committed to 
the house of correction, and kept to hard labour, before any trial had taken 
place." 

" There was another case of the same kind," he continued, " but of 
still greater cruelty. It was the case of a man of the name of Swindells, 
whose house had been broken open in the dead of night, and his books and 
papers seized. His wife was at the time far advanced in her pregnancy ; 
the terror ])roduced a premature laboui', which caused the death of herself 
and of the child; and another inflint, the only remains of the unhappy 
man's family, was, when he was dragged to gaol, conveyed to the parish 
workhouse, and from thence, in a siiort time, to the parish burying ground 
The man, however, had been guilty of no crime. His family was destroy- 
ed — he Was himself discharged from prison, impoverished, ruined, a wi- 
dower, and childless, because some unfounded charge had been brought 
against him." 

Lord Holland said (Feb. 27th, 1818) " that the noble duke who had in- 
troduced tlie present bill (indemnity bill) had_ treated the subject rather 
lightly, by saying, that the government under the suspension act ' had 
merely abstracted a few individuals, for a time, from society.' So then, you 
take men from their family, friends, and employments; you immure them 
in dungeons ; you doom them to solitaiy confinement for months ; you expose 
their persons to every species of hardship, and their cliaracters to every 
kind of suspicion, and you call this ' only abstracting a few individuals from 
society for a time.' " 

In March, 1817", ah act was passed by the Parliament, — 
" the seditious meetings bill," — declaring iu the case of any 
public meeting, the punishment of death without benefit of 
clergy, for non-compliance with the order of a simple magis- 
trate to disperse. At that period, there were no less than two 
hundred crimes, besides murder, treason, and burglary, legal- 
ly punishable Avith death ; and sixty of them had been made 
capital in the reign of George III. ; seventeen of these by one 
act; and, of the number, one was for shooting a man; ano- 
ther the killing of a rabbit; a third, trying to kill a man in bis 
bed ; and a fourth, cutting down heads of fish-ponds. To thjs 
list of capital offences may be added cutting a hop-bine, or 9§ 
ornamental tree in gentlemen's grounds ; going to a masque* 
rade with the face blacked, and many others of a similar cast 
which are detailed in the speeches of Sir Samuel Romilly and 
Sir James Mackintosh, on the British penal code. 

By the Marriage Act five capital felonies are created in one 
line. From official evidence presented to the House of Com- 
mons, it appears, that nineteen persons, and occasionally 
twenty-one, have been executed on the same day in London- 
We have an instance, within the three years last past, of j^J 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

woman of the name of Mary Ryan, who had assisted her hus- 
band in an attempt to escape from Newgate, being brought to 
the bar for this ofl'ence, a few hours after she saw him carried 
to execution ; and tried and condemned with her infant at her 
breast, notwithstanding, as Sir James Mackintosh stated in 
the House of Commons, that she was, from the dehrium of 
her grief, as incapable of proceeding on her defence, or of ex- 
tenuating her act, as if she were in a state of confirmed insa- 
nity. Mr. Scarlett, a distinguished barrister, and member of 
the House of Commons, asserted, in his place, without contra- 
diction, (on the 2d March, 1819,) that if there was any coun- 
try more disgraced by sanguinaiy enactments than another, it 
was England. To illustrate further the recklessness of the 
legislature in such enactments, and the nature of the admoni- 
tion to which it has remained insensible, I will extract from 
the parliamentary history, part of a speech delivered in the 
House of Commons by a member of high standing, the 13th. 
of May, 1777, on the occasion of a bill for the better securing 
dock yards,. &c. by the punishment of death. 

Sir William Meredith said, 

" Had it been fairly stated, and specifically pointed out, what 
the mischief of coining silver in the utmost extent is, the hang- 
ing bill on that subject might not have been so readily adopt- 
ed ; under the name of treason it found an e. sy passage. I 
indeed, have always understood treason to be nothing less than 
some act or conspiracy against the life or honour of the king, 
and the safety of the state ; but what the king or state can suf- 
fer by my taking now and then a bad sixpence, or a bad shil- 
ling, I cannot imagine. By this nickname of treason, how- 
ever, there lies at this moment in Newgate, under sentence to 
be burnt alive^ a girl just turned of fourteen; at her master's 
bidding she hid some whitewashed farthings behind her stays, 
on which the jury found her guilty as an accomplice with her 
master in the treason. The master was hanged last Wednes- 
day ; and the faggots all lay ready for her ; no reprieve came 
till just as the cart was setting out, and the girl would have 
been burnt alive on the same day, had it not been for the hu- 
mane but casual interference of Lord Weymouth. Good God? 
Sir, are we taught to execrate the fires of Smithfield, while we 
are lighting them now to burn a poor harmless child for hid- 
ing a whitewashed farthing ! And yet this barbarous sentence, 
which ought to make men shudder at the thought of shedding 
blood for such trivial causes, is brought as a reason for more 
hanging and burning." 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

, " When a member of Parliament brings in a new hanging 
law, he begins with mentioning some injury that may be done 
to private property, for which a man is not yet liable to be 
hanged, and then proposes the gallows as the specific, infalli- 
ble means of cure and prevention ; but the bill in its progress 
often makes crimes capital, that scarce deserve whipping. 
For instance, the shop-lifting act was to prevent bankers' and 
silversmiths', and other shops, where there are commonly 
goods of great value, from being robbed ; but it goes so far, 
as to make it death to lift any thing off a counter with an in- 
tent to steal. Under this act, one Mary Jones was executed, 
whose case I shall just inention : it was at the time when press 
warrants were issued on the alarm about Falkland's islands. 
The woman's husband was pressed ; their goods seized for 
some debts of his, and she, with two small children, turned 
into the streets a-begging. It is a circumstance not to be for- 
gotten, that she was very young, (under nineteen) and most 
remarkably handsome. She went to a linen-draper's shop, 
took some coarse linen off the counter, and slipped it under 
her cloak ; the shopman saw her, and she laid it down : fov 
this she -was hanged! Her defence was, (I have the trial in 
my pocket) ' That she had lived in credit, and wanted for no- 
thing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her ; 
but since then, she had no bed to lie on ; nothing to give her 
children to eat ; and they were almost naked ; and perhaps 
she might have done something wrong, for she hardly knew 
what she did.' The parish officers testified to the truth of this 
story ; but it seems, there had been a good deal of shop-lifting 
about Ludgate ; an example was thought necessary, and this 
woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of some 
shop-keepers in Ludgate-street. When brought to receive 
sentence, she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved 
her mind to be in a distracted and desponding state ; and 
the child xvas sucking at her breast -when she set out for 
TyburnC 

" But for what cause was God's creation robbed of this its 
noblest work ? It was for no injury ; but for a mere attempt 
to clothe two naked children by unlawful means. Compare 
this, with what the state did, and with what the law did. 
The state bereaved the woman of her husband, and the chil- 
dren of a father, who was all their support ; the law deprived 
the woman of her life, and the children of their remaining 
parent, exposing them to every danger, insult, and merciless 
treatment, that destitute and helpless orphans suffer. Take 
all the circumstances together, I do not believe that a foulci* 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

murder was ever committed against law, than the murder of SE< 
this woman by law. Some who hear me, are perhaps blam- v-^ 
ing the judges, the jury, and the hangman; but neither the 
jddge, jury nor hangman are to blame; they are but ministe- 
rial agents; the true hangman is the member of parliament; 
he who frames the bloody law is answerable for all the blood 
that is shed under it. I cannot find in history any example of 
such laws as ours, except a code that was framed at Athens by 
Draco." 

Not merely the act of killing, but the mere attempt to kill 
game at night, in an enclosed place, is felony subject to trans- 
portation for seven years, under the monstrous system oigame 
laws. In 1816, according to official returns made to Parliament, 
twelve hundred persons were immured in various parts of the 
Jcingdom, for oifences against those laws, to the utter rUin and 
overwhelming distress of many hundreds of poor families. 
The preservaUon of game for the tables of the rich, is the 
equivalent for this mass of human misery, which, at the same 
time, confessedly leads to a depravation of morals among the 
lower orders, considerably greater in the proportion. 

One of the most respectable British Journals, Bell's Weekly 
Messenger, June 22d, 1818, holds this language : 

" We have often had occasion to say, and we shall repeat 
it, that in no country in the world is the revenue so mercilessly 
collected and enforced as in England. In no country in the 
world is less conceded to private distress." The critics of 
Edinburgh can hardly claim for Scotland an exemption from 
this last reproach, if we are to credit the details given in the 
following extract from the " Proceedings of the House of Com- 
mons" for the 30th April, 1818. 

" Mr. Findlay rose to move for a return of the number of 
prisoners confined for small debts in the several prisons of 
Scotland. The House, he was persuaded, could hardly ima- 
gine the degree of misery which the prisoners alluded to were 
condemned to suffer, and when the numbers who thus suffered 
were taken into account, combined with the insignificaht debts 
.for which they suffered, its astonishment must be excited, 
■while its feelings must be severely afflicted. In the prisons 
.6f Glasgow alone, there were last year no less than ninety- 
* ree persons confined for sums under one pound, and it was 
Ik) be recollected that not one of those was likely to come out 
^ prison, without having his morals polluted by the persons 
lie was obliged to associate with, while in prison. The whole 
adimber of prisoners thus confined in all the Scottish prisons, 
whounted, he had reason to believe, to several hundreds, while 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

I- he apprehended that those confined for sums under |g5, 
^^ amounted to some thousands. He had also to observe that 
none of these poor prisoners were entitled to any prison allow- 
ance or succour, until ten days after their committal, while the 
receipt of each aftenvards was only Ad. per day. Yet the 
creditor could not commit one of these prisoners, without ex- 
pending ten shillings, nor could the debtor be released without 
paying six shillings." 

Some more extracts from the parliamentary debates of the 
two last years, will restore the balance between England and our 
southern states, according to the mode of account opened by 
the Edinburgh Review, in the article on Fearon's Travels. 

Lord R. Seymour observed (June 17th, 1817) " that gentlemen not con- 
versant witli parish workliouses, were not aware how harshly the pauper 
lunatics were treated in them. To prevent their escape, they were consigned 
to tlie constant wear of the strait waistcoat, and this being, of all instruments 
of personal restraint, the most heating and irritating, the poor lunatic in it 
becomes clamorous and noisy ; when to prevent his annoying his neighbour 
by his noise, the lancet was applied to him, by which he was not unfrequently 
reduced to a state of exhaustion." 

Mr. Bennet presented (Feb. 1st, 1819) "a petition from Dr. Halloran, now 
under sentence of transportation for seven years, for forging a frank to a 
Jetter, complaining of the hardships and cruelties to which he was exposed. 
This case," the honourable member observed, "had excited a good deal of 
interest, and very naturally, from the disproportion between the offence and 
the penalty, and in reply, it was said tl\at Dr. Halloran's character was very 
questionable, and that he was no clergyman, &c. If the individual had 
assumed a character to which he was not entitled, why was he not prosecuted 
accordingly ? but as the case now stood, it would appear as if the man were 
tried for one thing, and punished on account of another. After mentioning 
the severe treatment to which Dr. H. had been exposed before trial, in be- 
ing confined among the most horrible characters, the honourable member 
proceeded to give an account of the convict vessel in which this individual 
was now confined; a statement, which he begged the House to understand, 
he made from his own personal observation. Dr. H. was conveyed to the 
hulks in an open boat, when extremely ill, and left in what was called a 
cabin, but what he (Mr. B.) should term a hole or dungeon, for nineteen 
hours, without any one going to him, saying nothing of the absence of medical 
aid ; he was placed in a hole or dungeon with twenty other convicts — the 
division being twelve feet square. In this hole or dungeon were cribs six 
and a half feet long and five and a half feet broad; and into one of these 
cribs six human beings were stowed. Here they passed the night without 
the opportunity of turning. 

The honourable member added, that when he examined this vessel, he 
was compelled to have the aid of a candle ; and he not only found the cabins 
limited and confined, as already described, but they were dirty and loath- 
some in the extreme. Such a sight was abominable to a country calling 
itself Christian, and particularly so to a government that was peculiarly 
Christian. The description of the inside of a black slave ship had recently 
excited a good deal of interest, not only in England, but throughout Europe. 
But wiiat would the house say when they learned that the inside of uiis 
■white slave ship was worse than that of a black slave ship. According to the 
section of the latter vessel, the blacks had one foot six inches breadth of 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

reposing room ; but the white slave ship only offered one foot one inch. He SEf( 
dtscribecl what he had seen — he pledged himself for the truth of what he v„^ 

stated." 

Mr. B. Bathurst (one of the ministry) "did not mean to deny, that there 
might be merit due to the honourable member for his active and personal 
interference. Uespecting- the conditions of the vessels, those who were 
condemned to them must expect many privations and hardslilps, and the 
ships luerc such as had long^ been used. The arguments were therefore against 
the system, not against the particular case. The convict ships were now 
fitted up iu the way in -which they always had been." 

Mr. Bennet said (April 3d, 1819) " the House was aware that Ilchester re- 
turned two members to parliament ; it was a patronised place ; or, In other 
words, if he might be permitted to use them, it was the property of a par- 
ticular family. It appeared from the petition which he held in his hands, 
that the proprietor tliought a small number of constituents more advantageous; 
and, to accomplish this object, he had pulled down a number of houses, by 
which about one hundred families had been driven from their homes, and 
were received into a sort of temporary poor-house, where they were shel- 
tered for a time, yet only eighteen or twenty of tliem had been paupers, 
the rest maintaining themselves by honest industry. Notice was however 
given, in consequence of prevailing political dissensions, that these unhappy 
families would be deprived of even that slielter ; the parish resisted, and an 
ejectment being- brought,, they were finally turned out ; thus one hundred 
and sixty-three men, women, and children, from extreme infancy to extreme 
age, had been driven into the open streets in tlve most inclement season of 
the year; some had screened themselves from the cold, with straw and 
hurdles; some had taken refuge in open stalls or in the neighbouring fields; 
and a considerable number of old and young of both sexes, decrepit old 
people with helpless infants and women in the last stage of pregnancy, had 
been huddled together in the Town Hall without distinction. The unroofing 
of houses had been heard of as an expedient of exclusion; but it remained 
for the agents of the proprietor of this borough, to drive a man, his wife, 
and five children from their dwelling, by filling the upper floors with dung 
and filth, which oozed and dripped through the ceilings." 

7. Few of the persons who may have followed me thus 
far in this section, will, I apprehend, any longer doubt that 
the vice of impertinence" has " crept" into the councils of 
the Edinburgh Review, as well as into the British cabinet; 
that it has actually " shared in the odious, miserable, vulgar 
spirit of abuse" which it alleges the opposite political sect to 
be "fond of displaj'ing against America;" that it has never 
even appeared to undertake her defence, but from party feel- 
ings and views; and that by perpetually contradicting itself 
when treating of her concerns or those of England, it has 
forfeited all claim to authority on either side of the question. 
Its readers may still recollect how severely Cobbett was han- 
(^ed, in the 20th number, for the " versatility of his succes- 
sive doctrines;" and they will readily apply the following 
l^ragraphs, with which it concluded its collation of those 
qtpctrines. 

»(. 

V> 



HOSTILITIES OF THE, &C. 

T I. " Now, what is it that we infer from this strange alterna- 
"^^^ tion of praise and blame in the pages of Mr. Cobbett ? Why, 
that nobody should care much for either ; that they are be- 
stowed from passion or party prejudice, and not from any 
sound principles of judgment; and that it must be the most 
foolish of all things, to take our impressions from a man whose 
own opinions have not only varied, but been absolutely reversed, 
within these four years." 

" By the uncharitable, such a man will always be regarded 
as a professional bully, without principle or sincerity — whose 
services may be bought by any one who will pay their price 
to his avarice or other passions; — and the most liberal must 
consider him as a person without any steadiness or depth ol 
judgment; — accustomed to be led away by hasty views and 
occasional impressions; — entitled to no weight or authority, in 
questions of delicacy or importance ; — and likely to be found in 
arms against his old associates, on every material change in hi' 
own condition, or that of the country." 



I 






S49 



SECTION VIII. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 



1. The Quarterly Review is an avowed, implacable enemy, SEC 
and somewhat more important to us in its hostilities, than the 
Edinburgh, on account of its intimate connexion with the Bri- 
tish government. It has constantly argued upon the general 
question of American concerns, by a reference to the single 
class of exceptions, and taken as the ground of universal re- 
probation, those partial irregularities in morals and manners, 
which are to be found in every country, and which, if they 
were sufficient to warrant the charge of barbarism or depra- 
vation against a whole nation, would be equally competent to 
prove that there is no civilization nor virtue left on earth. 

Mr. Burke said, in his speech on the Conciliation with Ame- 
rica — " I do not know the method of drawing up an indict- 
ment against a whole people. I cannot insult and ridicule 
the feelings of millions of my fellow creatures. I am not 
ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies entrusted 
with magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged 
with the safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the same title 
as a member of the British parliament." What this elevated 
and enlightened personage thus declared himself incompetent 
to perform, is the frequent and favourite achievement of a 
junto of poets and politicians in London, who profess to be 
of the number of his most faithful disciples and enthusiastic 
admirers. What he pronounced to be " for wise men, not 
judicious ; for sober men, not decent ; for minds tinctured 
*irith humanity, not mild and merciful ;" they can practise 
without shame, even with ostentation, towards the same coun- 
try, the vilification of which occasioned his remarks. 

Opinions utterly repugnant to each other; the most intem- 
perate and incautious sallies of hate and jealousy ; allegations 
so exorbitant as at once to manifest and defeat the purpose of 
♦the writers, characterize the articles of the Quarterly Review 
rtrhich relate to the United States, At the same time, nothing 
s to be found in them of the judgment, humour, knowledge, 
md elocution, which recommend ether parts of the Journal. 
Vol. I.-~I i " ' 



:t 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

^- The Edinburgh Review is jocose at our expense through 
pertness and arrogance ; the Quarterly from national fears 
and monarchical antipathy ; and the leer of the one is, accord- 
ingly, only smirking, while that of the other is Sardonic. 

It was utterly unworthy of men of high rank in the world 
of literature and criticism ; of political teachers of the loftiest 
pretensions ; of wits claiming to be the successors of the Swifts 
and Arbuthnots; to appear speculating, and deciding, and jest- 
ing upon a great country, like America, with such manuals as 
the travels of Ashe, Janson, Parkinson, Fearon, illiterate and 
interested slanderers, for whom they could not conceal their 
own heart)^ contempt, and whose publications, on any other 
subject, they would have cast from them in disdainful silence. 

If it had become necessary, for state purposes, such as the 
prevention of emigration, the weakening of a contrast imfa- 
vourable to the British order of things, and the counteraction 
of a dangerous influence with the nations of the continent, — or 
for the gratification of a prurient wit, a restless arrogance, or 
private political pique, — that the United States should be re- 
viled and derided, self-respect and sound policy exacted an 
exertion of patience to await, or of ingenuitv to contrive, some 
other occasion than those afforded by reports, the whole cast 
and tone of which, betrayed to the world, the insufficiency and 
venality of the authors. The British reviewers would have 
consulted their own dignity, and the important object of plau- 
sibility in their expositions of our character and condition 
more, had they resorted altogether for texts even to the news- 
papers written among us by " the expatriated Irishmen and 
Scotchmen," of whom the Edinburgh Journal speaks, rather 
than to books coarsely manufactured in London, out of the 
meanest and flimsiestmaterials brought thither by disappoint- 
ed or stipendiary Englishmen, whose pursuits and views made 
it impossible for any reflecting person to believe, that they had 
possessed either the oppoi'tunity, capacity, or inclination to 
represent the Americans justly and fairly. Other oracles bet- 
sides these ; or a course of original, and well-adjusted de-» 
traction, by argument, assertion, and ridicule, were wanting 
to enable critics, of whatever general authority in their vo- 
cation, to sophisticate the feelings and bewilder the reason 
of mankind in relation to the United States. I question 
whether a single auxiliary has been raised on the continent 
of Europe, for the crusade against the American name, by 
the passages which I am about to quote from the Quarterly 
Review, as samples of its liberality and veracity. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

" An American's first play-thing is a rattle snake's tail — SEC 
he cuts clown a tree on which the wild pigeons have built 
their nests, and picks up a horse load of young birds." 

" Intoxication with the Americans is not social hilarity 
betrayed into excess ; it is too rapid a process for that inter- 
val o{ generous feeling xvhich tempts the European on. Their 
pleasure is first in the fiery stimulus itself, not in its effect — 
not in drunkenness, but in getting drunk." 

" Hence the ferocity with which the Americans decide 
their quarrels : their roughs and tumbling : their biting and 
lacerating each other, and their gouging^ a diabolical prac- 
tice which has never disgraced Europe, and for which no 
other people have ever had a name."* 

"Living in a semi-savage state, the greater part of the 
Americans are so accustomed to dispense with the comforts 
of life which they cannot obtain, that they have learned to 
neglect even those decencies which are within their reach." 

*' They have overrun an immense country, not settled it. 
In this as in every thing else, the system of things is forced 
beyond the age of the colonies.''^ 

" The manners are boorish, or, rather, brutal.** In Ame- 
rica nothing seems to be respected ; there the government is 
better than the people. The want of decorum among the 
Americans is not imputable to their republican government ; 
■for it has not been found in other republics ; it has proceed- 
ed from the effects of the revolutionary war, from their pre- 
mature independence^ and from that passion for gambling 
which infects all orders of men^ clergy as xvell as laity ^ and 
the legislators as well as the people."* 

*' The state of law in America is as deplorable as that of 
religion, and far from extraordinary."! 

*' Two vnlUons of slaves are now smarting under the lash 
In the American states : more than three millions have been 
imported and sold in those pure regions since the defeat of 
Cornwallis."! 

!■!<- — — ~ 

* No. 4. — Article on Holmes's Annals. See Note R. 
_^, -J- No. 6. — Article on Northmore's Washin^on. 
^'S This allegation was made in 1809, only 28 years from the period of the 
li^eat of Cornwallis : so that on an average more than 100,000 must have 
'been annually imported ! By the census of the population of the United 
States for 1810, the whole number of slaves was then only 1,191,364. 
Therefore, at least two millions must have perished among us since 1781 ! 
It is wonderful that the African Institution of London has not yet availed 
, itself of this portentous fact, vouched by the Quarterly Review. 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

, " Every free woman is a voter in America."* 

" The judges are not independent ; but are subservient tcr 
the government, and creatures of the President and Senate ."f 

" No such character as a respectable country gentleman is 
known in America.":): i i: 

" For the practitioners of law, physic, and surgery, no 
preparatory course of study, no testimonial of competency^, 
no kind of examination, no particular qualifications, no 
diploma, no license are required. "§ 

*' Franklin in grinding his electrical machine and flyinj^ 
his kite, did certainly elicit some useful discoveries in a 
branch of science that had not much engaged the attentionj| 
of the philosophers of Europe. But the foundation of Franks 
lin's knowledge was laid, not in America, but in London. 
Besides, half of what he wrote was stolen from others, and 
the greater part of the other not worth preserving. It would 
be rating his moral writings very high to estimate them at the 
same value to the community as his eleemosynary legacy ."[) 

" The supreme felicity of a true born American is inac- 
tion of body and inanity of mind. "^ 

" Strange as it may appear, the south-western part of the 
New World has already begun to consider the north-eastern | 
as havhig' passed the meridian of life ^ and accordingly given j 
it the name of old America."**^ 

" The founders of American society brought to the compo- ( 
sition of their nation no rudiments of liberal science." 

" America is all a parody — a mimicry of her parents ; it i 
is, however, the mimicry of a child, tetchy and wayward in : 
its infancy, abandoned to bad nurses, and educated in low 
habits." 

In the 4th number we were told — " there has been little 
mixture of nations in America, not more than in England ;" 
but in the 20th number, we find the reviewer talking of 
America as " a nation derived from so many fathers," and > 
explaining " why the thoughtless, dissolute, and_ turbulent 
of all nations should in commingling^ so neutralize one ano- 
ther in America, that the result is a people ivithout wit or 
fancyP 

At times, this journal has gone into a train of elaborate 
reasoning to prove the opposition of interests between " Old 
xvorn out^'' and " New America," and the certitude of their 
speedy severance. From the same motive — political jea- 

•No20. :tlbicl. ■ lllbid. ** Ibid. 

t Ibid. § Ibid. % No. 38, 



BRITISH REVIEWS. % 

lousy and alarm — which it has never been able to conceal, itSKC. \ 
has dealt in menacing cautions, of which the following will ^^"^ 
serv'c as an amusing specimen, and disclose the kind of com- 
fort which is sought among the ministerial literati of Lon- 
don, for the increase of our power. 

" It is not in Europe only that the prosperity of Russia is 
likely to be advantageous to the British monarchy. There 
is a nation without the limits of Europe, to whom, for the 
sake of our kindred race and common language, we would 
gladly wish prosperity, but whose hope of elevation is built 
on our expected fall ; and who, even now, do not affect to 
conceal the bitterness of their hatred towards the land of their 
progenitors. Already we hear the Americans boasting that 
the whole continent must be their own ; that the Atlantic and 
Pacific are, alike to wash their empire, and that it depends 
on their charity what share in either ocean they may allow 
to our vessels. They unroll their map and point out the dis- 
tance — between Niagara and the Columbia. Let them look 
to this last point well. They will find in that neighbour- 
hood a different race from the unfortunate Indians, whom it 
is the system of their g-overnment to treat with uniform harsh- 
ness! .' They will find certain bearded men with green jackets 
and bayonets, whose flag is already triumphant over the coast 
from California to the straits of Anian, whohave the faculty 
wherever they advance, of conciliating and even civilizing 
the native tribes to a degree which no other nation has at- 
tempted, and whose frontier is more likely to meet theirs in 
Louisiana, than theirs is to extend to the Pacific. These are 
not very distant expectations, and they are not unfavourable to 
England:' (April, 1818.) 

". 2. Our backwardness in the production of good books, 
Ihas not been quite so favourite and frequent a topic with 
ithe Quarterly Review, as the other assailable points more 
in the line of the political object. In the midst of the 
first general denunciation of this country,* we find it ad- 
mitted that " it is no great reproach to the Americans 
if they have not yet done more in literature ; and that 
more ought not to be expected from their circumstances and 
population." Nevertheless the same writers have not failed 
to ring all the changes upon the works of Dwight, Barlow, 
and "• Mr. Chief Justice Marshall." The course pursued 
..with three of the American publications, — Inchiquins's 

» lieview of Holmes's Annals. — No. 4. 



I « 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

^ ^' View of the United States, the Travels of Lewis and Clarke, 
and Colden's Life of Fulton, to which they afterwards ex- 
tended their notice, is marked by traits as discreditable and 
disgusting, as individuate any case in the annals of British 
criticism. 

The " View of the LTnited States" was a mere vindica- 
tion of the native country of the author from the aspersions 
cast upon it abroad ; it simply represented the main features 
of our character and condition ; pourtrayed with an impartial 
hard some of our most conspicuous statesmen ; and asserted 
the merits of two of the American works, which had been 
traduced in England. It attempted no reprisals upon the 
English aggressors ; used no harsh language ; decried no 
European nation. It did not even run into an indiscriminate 
panegyric of the United States, though it professed to be a 
*' favourable view of them," which might be considered as 
at least pardonable, after so much had been written in Eu- 
rope on the opposite side. Its general complexion argued 
liberal studies, and it was recommended by a diction, liable 
indeed to some exceptions, but, on the whole, classical, ele- 
gant, and vigorous. In short, there was enough about it to 
soften the national prejudices, and even to win the praise, of 
a European critic of ordinary liberality. The Quarterly 
Review, however, assailed this, in itself inoffensive and 
commendable performance, with the utmost asperity ; it re- 
viled the author personally ; misrepresented his opinions and 
misquoted his language ; and took occasion to rake in all the 
lampoons and gazettes already noticed, for materials, out of 
which it framed what it called " a correct portrait of the 
people of the United States," but what no perspicacious and 
generous mind can see in any other light than as a malignant 
libel, and hideous caricatiu'e. 

The " History of Lewis and Clarke's Expedition" had not 
merelj' nothing in it, to give umbrage, or to rouse national 
antipathies^ but seemed to prefer irresistible claims upon the 
favour of all the friends of knowledge, and to leave scope 
only for the most generous sympathies. The book is a sim- 
ple, clear narrative, without reference to any invidious topics ; 
and the expedition itself was alike unexceptionable in the 
design, conduct, and results, all of which, indeed, bear a 
salient character of excellence and dignity. It stifled the 
petulance, and extorted the admiration, of the Scottish critics, 
who set the proper example to their brethren of London, by 
pronouncing upon it the following eulogy. 

*' We myst remark, that this expedition does great credit 



BRITISH REVIEWS. g 

both to the government by which it was planned, and to the SEC. ^ 
persons by whom it was executed. The good sense, activity ^-•''"v^ 
and perseverance of the commanders cannot be too much 
commended ; their treatment of the natives was humane and 
kind; and though their mission was in its intention concilia- 
tory, yet this purpose could not have been carried into effect 
but by men of much good temper and sound understanding, 
considering how long they were exposed to the vexations 
arising from the suspicion, caprice, and levity of savages. 
The great harmony that seems to have prevailed, the spirit, 
steadiness, and exertion in the midst of so much hardship 
and danger, are highly meritorious ; and exhibit a band of 
active and intrepid men, which no country in the world would 
not be proud to acknowledge." 

This was a strain worthy of the theory of the critical in- 
stitute, but the spirit of the Quarterly Review could not be 
exorcised as completely. It relented so far as to admit that 
Lewis and Clarke " travelled near 9000 miles — the longest 
river voyage undertaken since that of Orellana ;" and that 

they performed with equal ability, perseverance, and suc- 
cess, one of the most arduous journies that ever was accom- 
plished." Acknowledged merits of such magnitude called 
for tenderness to the reputation of the individuals in all points; 
for the kindest interpretation of appearances in the least doubt- 
ful : yet the English Reviewer did not hesitate scornfully to 
intimate, that they took pleasure in the obscenities of the In- 
dians of the Missouri ;* and this affront is given upon no 
9ther foundation than that those obscenities are related. The 
relation, too, is in Latin, uncouth Latin indeed ; but such as 
it is, it evinces, in the use of this veil, a refinement of feeling, 
the opposite of the imputed grossness. Let the voyages of 
Captain Cook, Captain Wilson, and other English naviga- 
tors ; or the narratives of any of the English travellers among 
savage nations, be consulted, and it will be seen that they are 
flftuch less studious of decorum ; and that a charge of the 
kind might be made against them with more plausibility, if 
we admit there could be any colour of reason for making it 



* "The women of the Aricara Indians prostitute themselves publicly, in 
the intervals of dancing. The writer cannot be charged with oflending de- 
cency in describing tliis abomination, — lie has related another not less abomi- 
nable, in Latin, from respect to decorum, but in both instances it is evident that 
he and Ids companion were not men who felt any pain at beholding the degradation 
of liuman nature." The very reverse is evident to all who are not of the 
class of moralists and philanthropists " w illing to lo^ e all mankind, except an 
..Tmerican," 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

^ !• on such a foundation. The personal acquaintance of the 
~ two gallant leaders of the American expedition, require no 
argument to be convinced of their uniform elevation of sen- 
timent and deportment. 

They were, certainly, unfortunate in the choice of names 
for the natural objects which thej'^ were the first to bring to 
the knowledge of the civilized world. But this merit of dis- 
covery, and the sagacity, fortitude, perseverance, exemplary 
temper displayed throughout the expedition, rendered doubly 
venial so inconsiderable a fault. A refined classical taste has 
belonged to very few of the illustrious men to whom we are 
indebted for the enlargement of geographical science; and the 
exploration of the w ild creation through which Lewis and 
Clarke penetrated, presented the case, if ever there was one, 
in which the absence of that accomplishment could be consi- 
dered as excusable in itself, or its effects — nay even advan- 
tageous on the whole, and immediately conducive to the more 
perfect achievement of the gigantic enterprise. Instead of 
the gentle and courteous reproof which became the occasion, 
the Quarterly Review made their homely nomenclature the 
subject of unsparing satire, and turned it into doggerel level- 
led not only against the heroic adventurers, but their country, 
and particularly against the high officers of state with whom 
the expedition originated. If the wretched diatribe to which 
I refer, coarser by far in its texture than the occasion of it ; 
too low even for a place in " Coleman's Broad Grins," be- 
longs to the pen of the author of the Baviad and Mceviad, 
and the Translator of Juvenal ; of the scourge of poetasters, 
and the assayer of English verse, it furnishes a striking ex- 
ample of the power of national prejudice and party-devotion, 
to work the most violent and pitiable transformations. How 
capital this stroke at the Americans, on the occasion of their 
disclosing a new world to the gaze of philosophy and the 
march of civilization ! 

" Flow, Little Shallow, flow, and be tliy stream 
Their great example, as it will their theme !" 

And how natural and happy the transition from such wit in 
numbers, to such wit in prose, as the following ! — " From 
Big-Muddy, they, the explorers — to borrow a title of Ameri- 
can extraction— proceeded to Jefferson, and with not less fe- 
licity to Madison from Little Shallow," &c. 

Before I have done with the article in question, I would 
call attention to two more passages as illustrative of the spirit 
presiding over the American department of the Journal. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. g 

" It was not long before they (Lewis and Clarke) reached SEC. ^ 
the remotest source of the Missouri, and drank of the foun- ^^"^ 
tain — a situation not altogether nmvorthij of being compared 
with that of Bruce at the fountain of the Abyssinian Nile." 

" Langsdorff notices a curious trade which the Ameri- 
cans carry on in this article of fire arms on the North West 
coast. He says they send out a gunsmith in every ship, to 
buy up at one place all the guns which want repairing, and 
sell them as new pieces at another!" 

I aver, upon the avuhority of some of the distinguished Ame- 
rican merchants who trade with the North West Coast, that 
this statement, so kindly copied from Langsdorff, is utterly 
false. W^ere it true, it would not enable us as yet, to dispute 
the palm of fraudulent ingenuity, with our English kinsmen. 
It falls short of such a practice as the following, related by 
Mr. Southey in " Espriella's Letters ;" a better authority than 
Langsdorff. " A regular branch of trade here, at Birming- 
ham, is the manufacture of guns for the African market. 
They are made for about a dollar and a half : the barrel is 
filled with water ; and, if the water does not come through, it 
is thought proof sufficient : of course they burst xvhenfired^ and 
mangle the ivretched negro^ xvho has purchased them upon the 
credit of English faith ^ and received them^ most probably^ as the 
price of human flesh ! No secret is made of this abominable 
trade i yet the government never interferes ; and the persons con- 
cerned in it are not marked^ and shunned as infamous.''''* 

The story from Langsdorff is entitled to about the same 
credit as the assertion made in the 26th No. of the Quarterly 
Review, that Captain Porter of the American frigate Essex, 
after losing half his crew, xvas taken by a ship of inferior force. 
The hardihood of the Reviewer may almost confound those 
who read the following extract, from the official letter, dated 
0th March, 1814, of Captain Hillyar of his Majesty's ship 
Phoebe (the antagonist of Porter) to Commodore Brown, 
tationed at Jamaica. " The defence of the Essex, taking into 
consideration our great superiority offorce^ the very discou- 
raging circumstances of having lost her main top-mast, and 
being twice on fire, did honour to her defender, and must 
fully prove the courage of Captain Porter." 

The ' Life of Robert Fulton, by Cadwallader D. Colden 
Df New York,' has experienced a treatment from these up- 
right critics, more remarkable still, and, if possible, more 

* See also, on this head, Clarkson's Histon' of the Abolition of the Slave 
Trade, Vol.11, c. iii. 

Vol. I.— K k 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

r I. shameless. The work of Mr. Golden appears as a mere 
"^^ Biographical Memoir, read before the Literary and Philoso- 
phical Society of New York, conformably to one of the prin- 
cipal ends of that respectable institution. It obtained the shape 
of a book at the request of those to whom it was addressed ; 
and the proceeds of its publication, whatever they might be, 
were assigned to the erection of a monument to the memory of 
the illustrious engineer. The author announced himself, even 
in the title-page, emphatically as his friend, and took charge, 
avowedly, of his panegyric. This, — for one who had known 
him in relations of the closest intimacy, and when the deceased 
had left so many titles to the most solemn commemoration — 
was unexceptionable in itself, and sanctioned, moreover, by 
abundant precedents in the practice of the European nations. 
Mr. Golden was not a writer by profession or habit ; he be- 
longed to the bar, at which he had established the highest 
reputation, and filled the highest office. He is now mayor of 
the city of New York ; a station of great consequence and 
dignity. He is the grandson of the Lieutenant Governor Gol- 
den who wrote the celebrated History of the Five Indian Na- 
tions, and whose merits and honours in the world of science, 
are second only to those of Franklin among the men that 
have flourished on the American continent as politicians and 
philosophers.* The biographer of Fulton has shown himself 
worthy of this descent, by an acknowledged, invariable pro- 
bity; a versatile genius; and the assiduous cultivation of the 
sciences and liberal arts in the midst of extensive professional 
engagements, and of arduous municipal duties. It was in mo- 
ments snatched from these, that, to gratify his feelings and the 
wishes of the learned society which ranks him as one of its most 
useful and erudite members, he framed the Memoir in ques- 
tion, with a full conviction, derived from the nearest observa^ 
tion, of the reality of the services and qualities which he cele"- 
brated : and, whatever he may have claimed of excellence for 
the labours of Fulton, it is impossible he could have been 
more unassuming, or unpretending, as respects his own pro 
duction. If he has asserted extravagant titles for his subject,it 
is manifestly without any designs, — from no impulses — which 
can lay him open to personal reproach or incivility. The 
tenor of his book proves his competency to his task ; in 
point of style, arrangement, and general instructiveness, it is 
all that could be expected or desired for the occasion. 

He was led by the nature of his theme, and the wondew 
of steam-navigation which he witnessed about him, to medi-i 

* See notes.- 



BRITISH RFA'IEWS. 

Late much, and lay the utmost stress, upon the magnitude of SEC. 
its benefits to the human race. It is not surprising that 
these should appear of less consequence and sublimity, to an 
observer in England, where, from the shortness of the dis- 
tances and the faciUties of canal navigation, so little, com- 
paratively, remained to be done for internal communication ; 
where the small steam-boats, plying on the diminutive 
streams, and serving only the purpose of conveying passen- 
gers a few miles with greater convenience, are so little im- 
posing either to the eye or to the imagination. But in Ame- 
rica, the actual and future scene, in this respect, has an 
engrossing and transporting influence, and is of a real im- 
portance and magnificence, which scarcely leave scope for 
exaggeration in feeling or representation, 

Mr. Golden saw steam-vessels of four and five hundred 
tons, constructed as commodiously, and furnishing as perfect 
security for merchandise or passengers, as the ware or the 
dwelling-house ; overcoming with unexampled velocity the 
powerful currents of our mighty rivers ; multiplying indefi- 
nitely on the innumerable waters of this vast country, and 
almost accomplishing the wish of the lover — the annihila- 
tion of time and space — in the domestic intercourse of 
North America. He could at once extend his view to the 
southern regions of this hemisphere ; to the continents of 
Europe, Africa, and Asia, and see in prospect the same 
prodigies wrought there, and the same train of moral and 
physical advantages ultimately realized. He had seen a 
steam-frigate of gigantic size, moving on the Hudson with 
the facility and force of motion, and the military faculties, 
which would assure invulnerability to the seaports of his 
country, and might give a new and desirable character to 
maritime warfare.* He had seen, to use his own words, 
" the Paragon, of three hundred and thirty-one tons bur- 
then, tow the steam frigate Fulton, which is of the burthen 
of two thousand four hundred and seventy-five tons, from 
the ship yai'ds in the Sound, where she was launched, 
to the dock or the city of Jersey, on the Hudson, where 
she was to receive her machinery, at the rate of four miles 

* " Every one," says Cuvier, in his brilliant Discourse of 24th April, 1816, 
on the Progress of the Sciences, before the French Institute — " every one 
may see how much this invention of Steam-Boats will simplify the navigation 
of our rivers, and how much agriculture will gain in men and horses, that 
may now return to the fields; but what we may be also permitted to descry, 
and what will, perhaps, be more important, is the revolution to which it 
will lead in maritime warfare and in the power of nations. It is extremely 
probable that we shall have to reckon this among the /experiments, that can 
be said to have changed tlie face of the world." 



HOSTILITIES OP THE 

T I. and an half an hour ; the same frigate, propelled by that ma- 
''^»' chinery alone, make a passage to the ocean and back, a dis- 
tance of 53 miles, in eight hours and twenty minutes — the 
Fulton steam-boat, which navigates the East river, passing 
daily through Hell-gate against a rapid frequently running 
at the rate of six miles an hour." 

The crossing of the broadest and most rapid rivers, before 
alike dangerous, difficult, and tedious, had been rendered 
safe, easy, and expeditious, by the use of steam ferry-boats, 
capable of carrying hundreds of passengers and vehicles at 
a time, and almost any mere burden. 

From these performances, prospects and hopes naturally 
opened upon the 'mind of our author, which would have 
warmed any fancy ; and sentiments of admiration and grati- 
tude towards Fulton were excited, which cannot appear hy- 
perbolical to an American, especially at this time, when we 
know that a steam-ship is on her'passage across the Atlantic ; 
and that a fleet of steam-vessels are makingtheir way, with a 
detachment of the army of the United States, to establish a 
post at the Yellow Stone, on the Missouri, in the interior of 
our continent, two thousand miles from the mouth of the 
Mississippi. These two facts render it not improbable that, 
by the same ineans, the passage between Europe and Ame- 
rica will be made in less time, and with less inconvenience, 
than a journey between Edinburgh and London was accom- 
plished half a century ago ; and that a commerce between 
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans may be maintained, through 
the Columbia and Missouri, with as much certainty and fa- 
cility, as it is between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. 

With such ulterior results as likely,and with the incalculable, 
realized good, before him, Mr. Golden ventured to say of the 
man whom he considered as its immediate, intelligent author, 
that "there could not be found in the records of departed worth, 
the name of a person to whose individual exertions mankind 
are more indebted, nor one which would live farther into 
time, if not robbed of the fame due to superior genius, exerted 
with wonderful courage, industry, perseverance, and success,'* 
!No impartial and reflecting reader could view this declaration 
as extravagant, or fail to approve both of the tone and pur- 
port of the passage which immediately follows in the biogra- 
phy. " If the construction of a bridge, or the formation of a j 
canal, has often given a celebrity which has been transmitted I 
through many ages, what fame and what gratitude does not he 
deserve, who has furnished a means of transportation which 
may bring the inhabitants of the different quarters of the 
world nearer to each other than, previously, those of the same 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

territory considered themselves ; which will spread with a SEC 
facility before unknown, the influence of religion, civiliza- 
tion, and the arts ; which will binng the whole human spe- 
cies to an intimate acquaintance with each other ; and will 
unite mankind by the bonds of mutual intercourse." 

Fulton himself had never pretended that he was the first 
projector or inventor of steam-boat navigation ; and his bio- 
grapher is far from having ascribed to him this merit. Mr. 
Golden admitted that " some ingenious attempts to propel 
boats by steam had been made long before the time Mr. Ful- 
ton was known to have thought of it;" and that the idea origi- 
nated Avith an Englishman, Mr. Jonathan Hulls, who pub- 
lished his scheme in 1737, at London. Our author received 
implicitly the statement respecting Hulls' suggestions, which 
he read in Buchanan's " Treatise on Propelling Vessels by 
Steam," a work that appeared in Scotland in 1817. What 
he claimed for Fulton, and what alone Fulton claimed for 
himself, was, his being the first, who, by improvements on 
the mere conceptions or vain attempts, of others, established 
steam-navigation so as to render it perpetually practicable 
and unboundedly useful — improvements eflfected not by a 
lucky chance or cunning plagiary, but by a i-are combina- 
tion of inventive powers, of mathematical and philosophical 
science, of mechanical knowledge and experience, and of 
intrepidity and perseverance. Buchanan, the Scottish writer 
whom I have just mentioned, had owned in his treatise, 
\ while vindicating the credit of origination for Hulls, that 
*' the steam-boats of Fulton were the first that succeeded in a 
profitable way." A more absolute admission, ratifying fully 
the doctrine of Mr. Golden, has been naade in the April num- 
ber of Dr. Thompson's Annals of Philosophy, in an able 
paper on the origin of steam-boats. The writer holds the fol- 
lowing language. " It is not a little remarkable in the liistory 
of the arts, and forms a striking instance of the slow and pro- 
gressive steps by which they advance, that that most elegant 
and useful discovery, the steam-boat, first brought forward in 
1736, by Jonathan Hulls of London, and afterwards pub- 
licly investigated and tried by Lord Stanhope and Mr. Miller, 
of Dalswinton, should have been carried to America, and 
there first have changed its character from mere experiment 
to extensive practice and utility^ and that it should again have 
been introduced into Britain upon the experience of Americans, 
only so lately as the year 1813, when it was first employed 
upon the river Glyde." Even the Quarterly Review, in the 
article upon which I am about to animadvert, avows it to be 



HOSTILITIES OP TIIC 

" beyor.d all question that Mr. Fulton made considerable i)xt* 
provements in the application of the steam-engine to the navi- 
gation of boats " and adds — " It is quite natural that the 
Americans should uphold the reputation of their own coun- 
trymen. We cannot blame them for it, and some allowance 
may reasonably be made for excess of panegyric, in speaking 
of artists of native growth." 

I have premised all these details, in order to the better un« 
derstanding of the article in question, which I will now cur- 
sorily examine. It begins thus : 

" Although our readers may be inclined to give us credit 
for some knowledge of our trans-atlantic brethren, yet we can 
honestly assure them that we were not quite prepared for such 
a sally as this of Cadwallader Golden, Esq." &:c. alluding to 
his declaration noticed above, of the obligations of mankind 
to Fulton. We have then a series of sneers at the panegyrics 
pronounced upon the engineer by others of his countrymen, 
and at the New York Historical Society. The Reviewers 
themselves sit in judgment upon Fulton, and describe him 
as " a man who possessed just talent enough to apply the in- 
ventions of others to his own purposes^ Mr. Golden is taxed 
with disingenuity and misrepresentation, and ever and anon, 
with as much urbanity as wit, styled " Mr. Gadwallader Col- 
den," " friend Gadwallader," " the conscientious and con- 
sistent friend," &c. The critics, by way, we must suppose, 
of teaching him a lesson of ingenuousness andti'uth, assume, 
that he had arrogated for Fulton the merit of discovery, in 
the case of the steam-boat, and proceed laboriously to re- 
fute the pretended doctrine. 

It is unlucky, that in setting out, they could find no stronger 
language in the work of Mr. Golden, than the phrase — ^" We 
and all the world are indebted to Fulton for the establishment 
of navigation by steam." With the biography in their hands, 
and acquainted, no doubt, with what Buchanan had written, 
they do not scruple to introduce and parade the theory of 
Hulls, in such a way precisely, as if they were the first to 
announce it, and Mr. Golden and America to be confounded 
with the disclosure. They give an account of Mr. Miller's 
experiments, in the year 1787, on the Forth and Glyde 
Canal, which they acknowledge " did not succeed to his 
entire satisfaction ;" and they lay great stress upon those of 
one of his assistants, of the name of Symington, who pursued 
his ideas, with no better success in the end. We are told by 
them, that Fulton paid a visit to Symington, and examined 
his boat ; and in the same manner, it is affirmed, equally with- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

ovit the production of any evidence, in the paper of Thomp- SEC 
son's Annals, to which I have referred, that Fulton, saw the 
experiments of Miller — a circumstance highly improbable, 
since Fulton was born only in 1765, and did not leave this, 
his native country, until after his majority. 

The very attempts of the Reviewers to invalidate the claim 
set up for Fulton, tend to show that it is well founded. We 
may admit, ag Mr. Golden has done, that Jonathan Hulls was 
the first who thought of using the power of steam for naviga- 
tion ;* but it is not pretended tliat he ever proceeded to apply 
his conception, even so far as to make an experiment. It 
cannot but be perceived by every one conversant with what is 
now in practice, that Mr. Hulls' scheme would not have 
been effectual to drive the tow-boat itself, much less to drag 
'^ a two-decker." The steerage of balloons, and plans for 
the purpose, have been often suggested ; we have seen re- 
presentations of them, beating to windward under full sail. 
Should the art of governing them be hereafter discovered 
and perfected by the same individual, it will be quite as 
equitable to deny him the merit of balloon-navigation, in 
favour of the first speculators, or of the authors of the draw- 
ings, as it is to detrude Fulton from his pedestal, to substi- 
tute Jonathan Hulls. 

Patrick Miller never attempted to apply the engine to ves- 
sels. The Reviewers inform us that in a book which he pub- 
lished in 1787, he has said he had reason to believe that the 
power of the steam-engine might be employed to work the 
wheelsj so as to give them a quicker motion, and to increase 
that of the ship. He announced, at the same time, his inten- 
tion to make the experiment, and to communicate the result, 
if favourable^ to the public. No such communication is alleged 
to have been made, and the conclusion is inevitable, that the 
result was not favourable. With respect to Symington's boat, 
the assertion that it was seen by Fulton is wholly gratuitous ; 
there is no trace of the fact in the papers of the latter; it is, 
however, not impossible, and will be readily admitted. Mr. 
Golden has furnished proof that Fulton communicated the 
project of a steam-boat to Lord Stanhope, in the year 1793, 
seven years previous. The experiment of Symington on the 
Clyde is mentioned in the biography of Fulton, and it is not 

* This is not, however, precisely the case. Some of the English writers 
claim the merit for captain Savery, who, it it said, published the idea in 
1698, and even proposed wheels over the sides of the boat. Hulls took out 
a patent in 1736, for " towing vessels into harbour by means of a boat with 
patldles, to bci worked by steam." 



HOSTILITIES OP THE 

^ !• denied in that work, that the American availed himself of 
"'^^ the hints afforded by the abortive or incomplete experiments 
of his precursors. Their very errors may have suggested t© 
him the ineans of effecting his object. Scarcely one of the 
illustrious men who have the credit of noble discoveries, or 
improvements, in physics or in morals, but enjoyed this ne- 
gative kind of aid, or the positive advantage of seminal ideas, 
and partial schemes. Sir Isaac Newton was indebted to the 
experiments and observations of Kepler, and to the disco- 
veries of Grimaldi ; Galileo had seen the telescope of Me- 
tius : Watt profited by the labours of Newcomen : Dr. Jenner 
was not the first who imagined, or suggested, or tried, the 
prophylactic virtue of the vaccine. There is a striking ana- 
logy, in fact, between the cases of Jenner and Fulton : — the 
glory of vaccination is not more justly due to the one, than 
that of steam-navigation to the other. The question is not 
who first proposed to connect steam with navigation ; but 
who first and completely succeeded in so doing, and enabled 
others to succeed. The world will never consent to exalt the 
genius and merits of him who merely throws out a loose 
hint, or stops short at a diagram, or finishes with an abortive 
experiment, over those of the sanguine and accomplished 
enterpriser, who seizes derelict, and vivifies still-born ideas;, 
who, uniting in himself the aptitude to invent, the sagacity 
to distinguish, and the skill to execute, puts the world in 
lasting possession of that, which others had essayed, with 
such results only as tended to arrest the efforts of industry, 
and discredit the powers of art. 

When the Reviewers were dragging forward Mr. Syming- 
ton as the rival of Fulton, and alleging that his boat fully 
answered the expectations which had been formed, it would 
have been well if they had told us what those expectations 
were, and how fulfilled. For want of this information from 
them, I am obliged to look elsewhere for it. I find an 
account of Mr. Symington's experiment, in the Journals of 
the Royal Institution, for 1802 ; a publication which cannot 
be suspected of a bias unfavourable to Mr. Symington. It 
is there stated that he ascertained that his boat would travel 
at the rate of two miles and an half 2ca. hour; upon the placid 
surface of a canal, be it understood, where no current was 
to be breasted. But I will take the language of the Royal 
Institution itself, that it may be seen how far those who 
ranked among the best judges in England were, at that date, 
from clear ideas of the capacities, or fixed hopes of the per- 
manent success, of steam -navigation. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

' " Several attempts have been made to apply the force of SEC. 
steam to the purpose of propelling boats hi canals^ and there 
seems to be no reason to think the undertaking by any means 
liable to insuperable difficulties. 

*' An engine of the kind proposed by Mr. Symington, has 
been actually constructed at the expense of the proprietors 
of the Forth and Clyde navigation, and under the patronage 
of the governor, Lord Dundas ; it was tried in December 
last, and it drew three vessels from 60 to 70 tons burden at 
the usual rate of two miles and a half an hour. Mr. Syming- 
ton is at present employed in attempting still further im- 
provements, and when he has completed his invention, it 
Tn?iy, perhaps, ultimately become productive of very exten- 
sive utility." 

Mr. Fulton's first boat went almost from off the stocks at 
New York, to Albany, a distance of one hundred and sixty 
miles, and performed the voyage with and against the cur- 
rent of the Hudson, at the rate oijive miles an hour. When 
her machinery was more perfectly adjusted, she accomplish- 
ed the same passage at the rate of eight miles an hour. The 
vessels built on Mr. Fulton's plan, which are now in opera- 
tion, average ten miles an hour. The difference of speed 
between Mr. Symington's boat and Mr. Fulton's, alone ar- 
g^ies some material difference in the machinery. The ac- 
count above-mentioned, contains a description of Syming^ 
ton's boat. It is hardly necessary to add that it differs 
totally from that of Mr. Fulton ; or to ask — of what use would 
be Mr. Symington's boat, with a movement of two and a half 
miles an hour, in the American rivers of the south and west, 
which are now so successfully navigated by the boats oi 
Fulton, against currents of three and four miles an hour ? 

If the experiments made in England were so perfect, it is> 
incomprehensible how it happened, that no vessels were con- 
structed, and put in common use, until about five years 
after Fulton's boats were seen in successful operation on the 
Hudson. Nor is it more easy to conjecture, Avhy all the 
British boats now in use, are built according to Mr. Fulton's 
plan, and not according to that of Hulls, or Miller, or Sym- 
ington. 

It is pleasant to compare the pretensions set up for Great 
Britain by the Quarterly Review, with the confession of a 
British engineer, Mr. Dodd, a man of eminence in his profes- 
sion, and a skilful architect of steam-boats, — that the first of 
them which succeeded in Great Britain, was built in 1812 ; 
and that, although the Americans had given the fulUst trial 

Vol. I._I, I 



5 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

RT I. to the British invention during five years previous, it was 
necessary there should be a new one under the eyes of the 
British nation, to inspire conJide?ice^ and induce the building of 
more boats.* On the whole, no evidence is to be found of the 
practical utility of the British projects ; but there exists the 
most violent presumption to the contrary ; and it is impossi- 
ble, as regards England, to resist the force of the interrogation 
put by Mr. Golden — " If steam-boats had ever been construct- 
ed before the experiment of Fulton, so near perfection as to 
show that they might be used to their present advantage, can 
it be believed that they would have been abandoned ?" 

The unanswerable address of an American to a Briton, 
on this subject, is — " You conceived the idea of propelling 
boats by steam, as early as 1698 — you afterwards employed 
yourselves repeatedly in devising methods and making trials 
to carry that idea into effect — you could never succeed to your 
* satisfaction,' that is, to any advantageous extent — you relin- 
quished your impotent endeavours — one of my countrymen 
appropriated your conception ; new modelled your plans ; 
scanned and detected your mistakes ; and, as you confess, 
changed in America the character of your invention from 
mere experiment to extensive practice and utility: — the steam- 
boat issued from his hands as Minerva did from the head of 
Jupiter — a mature creation ; you were content to receive it, 
some years afterwards, ' upon the experience of the Ameri- 
cans,' neglecting entirelv your own boasted constructions of 
the same name, the utility of which, if not all sufficient for 
you, upon your narrow geographical scale, could be nothing ; 
for the rest of the world. Far, then, from holding so over- 
weening a language, from taking all the credit, you should 
rather take some shame, to yourselves, that you were not able 
to improve your notions to the point of general vitility. If, 
"with the advantage of discovery, you accomplished, virtually, 
nothing, in the lapse of more than a century, what must be i 
the merit of the stranger who, in America, accomplished li 
every thing at the first cast ? If you did not adopt this mode | 
of navigation, until five years after its complete triumph in 
America, and then received it with hesitation and a sort of 
incredulity, when would it have been turned to any account 
among you, had he not established it there ? How long might 
not the world have remained without this master-piece ?" 



* An Historical and Explanatory Dissertation on Steam-Kngines and Steam- 
Packets, by George Dodd, Civil Engineer. London, 1818. See Note T. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. % 

If the degree of merit claimed by Fulton could be con- SEC. A 
tested with success any where, it is in America, for Ameri- ^-^"^ 
cans, who preceded him and the British mechanicians, in the 
attempt to propel vessels by steam. Miller made his experi- 
ments on the Forth and Clyde Canal, and published his book, 
in 1787; Symington put his scheme to the test on the same 
canal in 1801. If Miller, as it is said in Thompson's xA.n- 
nals, communicated his plan to General Washington in 1787, 
an American had previously imparted a more perfect one to 
the general. This person, James Rumsey, of Virginia, con- 
structed a boat to be navigated by steam, in the summer of 
1785, after having obtained an exclusive right to the use of 
his invention from two states ; in the following year he 
made an experiment with her in the Potowmac ; and by 
the force of steam alone, propelled her against the current 
of that river at the rate of four miles an hour. In 1787, he 
published a pamphlet on the subject, which I have now before 
me, bearing this title — " A Short Treatise on the Application 
of Steam, whereby it is clearly shown, from actual Experir 
ments, that Steam may be applied to Propel Boats or Ves- 
sels of any burthen against Rapid Currants, with Great Ve- 
locity." His main positions in this pamphlet are, to use his 
own words, " that a boat might be so constructed, as to be 
propelled through the water^ at the rate of ten miles an hour, 
by the force of steam ; and that the machinery employed for 
that purpose, might be so simple and cheap, as to reduce 
the price of freight at least one-half in common navigation ; 
likewise that it might be forced, by the same machinery, 
,with considerable velocity, against the constant stream of 
long and rapid rivers." Another passage may be quoted, 
as not less pointed and remarkable. 

" In the course of the autumn and winter of 1784, I made 
such progress in the improvement of some steam engines 
.which I had long conceived would have become of the great- 
lest consequence in navigation, that I flattered myself this 
invention, if it answered my expectation (the truth whereof 
experiments have now established) would render mv labours 
more extensively useful, by being equally applicable to small 
boats, or vessels of the largest size, to shallow and rapid 
, rivers, or the deepest and roughest seas.'''' 

In his communication to General Washington, of March 
10th, 1785, he remarks, " I have quite convinced myself that 
boats of passage maybe made to go against the current of 
the Mississippi or Ohio rivers, or in the gulf stream, from 
60 to 100 miles per day." 



HOSTILITIES OP THE 

In Thompson's Annals it is said that Miller appears to 
have been exclusively the inventor of the double boat ; but the 
first which Rumsey devised in 1784, was of that description. 

Another American of the name of Fitch engaged in a course 
of experiments of the same nature v/ith those of Rumsey, 
about the same time, and a sharp controversy arose between 
them with respect to priority.* What can be put beyond 
question, is, that Fitch laid his plan before Congress in 
1785; navigated the river Delaware up and down, in the 
year 1786, with a steam-boat, which was brought, before it 
was abandoned in 1791, to the celerity of eight miles an 
hour; and that he obtained in the years 1786, 7, from the 
legislatures of New Jersey, Delaware, New York, and Penn- 
sylvania, an exclusive privilege for those states. There is 
not the least probability that either of these highly ingenious 
men had even heard of the suggestions of Savery and Hulls; 
there can be no doubt, indeed, of their total ignorance of 
•whatever had been proposed or attempted in Europe. Their 
plans and experiments, besides possessing the meritof origi- 
nality, have the advantage over those of Miller and Syming- 
ton In all other respects. A scientific comparison does not 
lie within my province; but I feel myself authorized to assert, 
that the result would be in favour of the Americans. Their 
views were more extensive ; their experiments bolder ; and 
they accomplished much more with machinery of such work- 
manship as could be procured in this country, at a tiine when 
it lagged far behind Great Britain in the mechanical arts. 

With respect, then, to the point of invention^ exclusive of 
that oi establishment which is conceded to her, America would 
seem to have stronger claims, in the matter of steam-naviga- 
tion, than Great Britain. The mere priority of time in the 
conception, where no communication can be presumed, will 
be viewed by none as the main consideration or determi- 
nate title. Mr. Golden has mentioned in some detail, in th< 
Life of Fulton, the attempts of Fitch and Rumsey, on oui 
rivers, and also the subsequent one of Rumsey on the Thames 
in England, whither he repaired in the expectation of find! 
ing greater facilities, and more opulent patronage, for hi( 
plans ; but those attempts are passed over in silence in th< 



* Fitch published a pamphlet, also, in 1788, which he entitled "The Orig 
nal Steam-Boat supported, or a Reply to Rumsey" He states therein thai 
he conceived his plan of steam-navigation in 1785; but discovered aftei'vvards, 
that two Americans, Mr. Henry, and Mr. Andrew EUicot, both of Pennsylva- 
nia, had thought of it as early as 1775, and 1778. See Note T. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. « 

British publications to which I have adverted.* The writer SEC. > 
of the article Steam-Engine, in Rees' New Cyclopedia, ob- 
serves, indeed, that steam-boats had been used in America, 
before the introduction of them by Fulton ; and " were be- 
gun there by Mr. Symington !" a fact very creditable to Scot- 
land, but altogether new in America, which is without record 
or tradition of the labours of this missionary. 

To heighten the contrast between their fairness and the 
disingeiiuity of Mr. Golden, the Reviewers treat of the tor- 
pedos of Fulton, in a strain, which would imply, that his bio- 
grapher had represented him as the first to propose the ex- 
plosion of gunpowder under water. It might also be infer- 
. red from their language, that he had sought to vindicate the 
\ offer of the torpedos to the different governments of Europe, 
i Now, as to the point of discovery, nothing can be more posi- 
I tive and unambiguous, than the renunciation in the biography. 
i *' It would," says Mr. Golden, " be doing injustice to the me- 
j mory of Mr. Fulton, not to notice, that Mr. Fulton did not 
pretend to have been the first who discovered that gunpowder 
might be exploded with effect under water ; nor did he pre- 
tend to have been the first who attempted to apply it in that 
way as the means of hostility. He knew well what had been 
done by another ingenious native American, Bushnell, in 
our revolutionary war." The Reviewers repeat, from this 
passage, the instance of Bushnell with all formality, and the 
air of drawing it from their own store of knowledge ! 

With regard to the conduct of Fulton in proffering his tor- 
pedos to various governments, his biographer goes no farther, 
in substance, than to assert, that Fulton reconciled it to his 



* Brissot de Warville had noticed them in his Travels through the United 
States, in the following manner : 

Sept. 1788. 

"I went^this day to see an experiment near the Delaware, on a boat, the 
object of which was to ascend rivers against the current. The inventor was 
Mr. Fitch, who had formed a company to support the expense. The ma- 
chine which I saw appears well executed and well adapted to the design. 
The steam engine gives motion to three large oars of considerable force, 
which were to give sixty strokes per minute. Since writing this, I have seen 
Mr. Kumsey in England. He is a man of great ingenuity ; and bj^ the ex- 
planation which he has given me, it appears that his discovery, though found- 
ed on a similar principle with that of Mr. Fitch, is very dilferent from it, and 
far more simple in its execution. Mr. Rumsey proposed then (Feb. 1789) 
to build a vessel which should g-o to America bv the help of the steam-engine, and 
■without sails. It -was to make the passage in 'fifteen days. I perceive with pain 
that he has not yet executed his project, which, when executed, will intro- 
duce into commerce as great a change as tjie discovery of the Cape of Good 
Hope." 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

own ideas of propriety, and acted from honest impressions, 
whether false or correct. The proceeding of Mr. Fulton is 
certainly supported by European examples without number, 
and may be considered as natural in every sanguine projector. 
I cannot easily see how an American, pursuing mechanical 
inventions in Europe, would be, prima facie^ culpable for 
offering to France and England indiscriminatel}^, a destruc- 
tive engine of war. The success of the one or the other 
power, is to be supposed indifferent to his feelings. I grant 
that, if the engine could be turned against his own country, 
he would never be justifiable. The talents and contrivances 
of English engineers have been lent indiscriminately to aid 
the hostilities of all the principal nations of Europe ; with 
the sanction of the government, when the interests of Eng- 
land were not likely to be affected. The Count de Bonneval 
and others of his description were never blamed, in Europe, 
for the mere fact of devoting their genius and skill to the 
improvement of the Turkisli armies and fortifications. Britain 
is now enriching herself by supplying both Spain and her 
colonies with the means of warfare ; from her manufactories 
issued the weapons and ammunition, with which the nations 
of Africa assailed and slaughtered each other for the purpose 
of filling her slave ships. 

I note these ciixumstances, to emblazon the modesty of the 
Reviewers in i-aising an outcry against the conduct of Fulton, 
and the character of his expedient of submarine explosion. 
They are, forsooth, filled with horror at this " succinct mode 
of murder en masse ;" these " infernal machines ;" forget- 
ting the machines called Congreve rockets, which, — while the 
torpedos can be directed only against armaments, — have been 
principally used by the British against the towns and domestic 
dwellings of their enemies ; sometimes, as in the instance of 
Stonington, to envelope in flames, houses in which unoffend- 
ing American women and children were placed for shelter. 
It may be proposed, as a problem for their consideration, 
whether the destruction of one of the bomb-ketches employed 
on that occasion, by a torpedo, would have been more atro- 
cious, than the act of the British general Sheaffe at the town 
of York in Canada, who left in the fortification from which he 
was driven by the American army, a secret mine, that ex- 
ploded a moment too soon, or it would have " blown whole 
regiments into the air ;" and, as the case was, killed many 
brave soldiers, — among them, the lamented Pike. 

*' Lord St. Vincent," say the Reviewers, " appears to have 
Sethis face against this unworthy mode of warfare, the tor- 



RniTISH REVIEWS. 

pedo ; feeling, as we believe every British officer would feel, ° 
that setting aside the intent, such devices ivere for the -weak and 
not for the strong. In his own mind, Mr. Pitt did, we dare 
say, condemn it, as every man of sense and honour would." 
Now, it is on record, that these two eminent personages, and 
every British officer, rejoiced in the Congreve rockets ; and 
that a board of British officers of the highest rank reported 
them, after their trial at Boulogne and Flushing, a most 
eligible auxiliary to the British arms. To show how innocent 
and generous a device they are, when compared with that 
*' succinct mode of murder en masse," the torpedo, I wiU 
copy some passages of the ample and able account of them 
which is given in Rees' Cyclopedia, article Rocket. 

" The Congreve Rocket. These rockets are of various 
dimensions, and are differently armed, accordmg as they are 
intended for the field, or for bombardment; carrying in the 
first instance either shells or canister shot, which may be 
exploded at any part of their flight, spreading death and de- 
struction amongst the columns of the enemy ; and in the second, 
where they are intended for the destruction of buildings, 
shipping., stores, &c. they are armed with a peculiar species 
of composition which never fails of destroying every com- 
bustible material with which it comes in contact." 

"■ The carcass rocket has been used in almost every one of 
our expeditions. They did incredible execution at Copenhagen. 
At the siege of Flushing, general Monnet, the French com- 
mandant, made a formal remonstrance to Lord Chatham re- 
specting the use of them in that bombardment. A small 
\ corps of rocketeers, in the memorable battle of Leipsic, 
|1 gloriously maintained the honour of the British arms. All the 
\ more minute and important particulars of this weapon, both 
\ of construction and composition, are very properly kept a 
". profound secret. The largest rocket that has yet been con- 
I structed, has not, we believe, exceeded three hundredweight; 
! but Sir William Congreve seems to have in contemplation 
'■■ others weighing from half a ton to a ton." 

" By means of the rocket, the most extensive destruction, 
even amounting to annihilation^ may be carried among the 
ranks of an advancing enemy, and that xvith the exposure of 
scarcely an individual. For this purpose, the rockets are laid 
in batteries, &c. They facilitate the capture of a ship by 
boarding, by being thrown into the ports, &c. ; the confusion 
and destruction which thence inevitably ensue, facilitate, &c. 
They are peculiarly adapted to add to the dreadful effect of 
. ■ fire-ships, which, if they were supplied each with a sufficient. 



J HOSTILITIES OP THE 

RT I. number of rockets, such an extensive and devastating fire 
^'^^i' would be spread in every direction, os to involve every vessel 
of the enemy in that destructive element. The jioating rocket 
carcass^ another of the inventor's applications, may be thrown 
in great quantities by a fair wind, against any fleet or arsenal,. 
xvithoiit the smallest risk^or without approaching within range 
of guns, &c." 

" Little more need be said in reference to the general im- 
portance and utility of the rocket system, &c." 
vj The inconsistency of the Reviewers, as Englishmen, is 
further manifested by the facts, so well attested as to be un- 
deniable, that the British ministry conceived strong alarms 
at the negociations between Fulton and the French govern- 
ment respecting the adoption of the torpedo ; that they made 
overtures to him, and drew him to England ; that they en- 
couraged his experiments with a view to emplo)' his " infer- 
nal machines," if found effectual, against the enemies of 
Great Britain; that they actually made an attempt to destroy 
the Boulogne flotilla by his means ; and that, after appointing 
a committee to decide upon the expediency of adopting his 
" devices," they finally rejected them altogether, as imprac- 
ticable^ — not as cruel, immoral, or dishonourable. From 
what passed, it is not uncharitable to suspect, that the true 
key to the rejection, is furnished in the saying of Lord St. 
Vincent, the authenticity of which the Reviewers do not dis- 
pute. " Pitt is the greatest fool that ever existed to encou- 
rage a mode of war which they who command the seas do 
not want." Mr. Pitt, it would seem from the statement of 
Mr. Golden, remarked, when he first saw a drawing of the 
torpedo, with a sketch of the mode of applying it, and un- 
derstood what would be the eff"ects of the explosion — that " if 
introduced into practice, it could not fail to annihilate all 
military marincs^^'' — an eff'ect which Great Britain could not 
feel it her interest to promote. 

The occasion of the establishment of steam navigation, 
appeared to the Reviewers, as that of the exploration of our 
western regions had done, very suitable for the vilification of 
the American people at large. Accordingly, they proceed in 
' this exalted language — " The vagrant adventurer, Fulton, , 
having failed in selling his infernal machines, sets himself to • 
prove, in a high strain of moral pathos, that ' blowing up 
ships of war' (so as not to leave a man to relate the dreadful I 
catastrophe) are humane experiments. We ought not to wonder, 
after this^ perhaps., that the character of Mr. Fulton has sur- 
vived in America as that of an honesty conscientious, and con- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. « 

distent man^ especiallLj as Mr. Cadxvallader Colden has sup- SEC. T 
ported his claim to it,''^ &c. ^-o' 

Having painted the American engineer in the blackest co- 
lours, and denied to him all original genius, they have not, 
with the London Critical Journal, deemed it advisable to 
represent him as " a native of Paisley, in Scotland,* where 
he had steam-boats constructed, actually employed both for 
experiment and use." But the author of the article in 
Thompson's Annals, being more kindly in his language con- 
cerning the merits of Fulton, and therefore not under the 
same restraint, clinches him and his offspring thus — " The 
experiments by Mr. Miller on the Forth and Clyde Canal, we 
have been informed, were either seen by, or communicated 
to, the late Mr, Fulton, engineer of America, who, it is be- 
lieved, was a native, or at least resided in this part of Scot- 
land, but afterwards went to America, where he had the merit 
and the honour, of introducing the steam-boat, upon an ex- 
tensive scale, on the great rivers and lakes of that country ; so 
that we can trace this invention most indisputably to a British 
origin." We cannot suppose that a " civil engineer," treat- 
ing of the history of steam-boats, in the month of April, 
1819, was ignorant of the existence, or had not opened the 
volume, of Fulton's biography, where his birth place is so 
distinctly and authentically stated. The misrepresentation 
which I have just quoted, is, therefore, unpardonable, and 
dishonours the valuable Journal in which it is found. There 
is a littleness, besides, in some of the arts practised by the 
Reviewers to gratify their spleen in this business of steam- 
boat navigation, which is truly pitiable. For instance, in the 
index to the nineteenth volume of the Quarterly Review, at 
the Avord ' Colden,' we read, '' The Life of Robert Fulton — 
its bombastic exordium p'' and at the word ' Fulton' — " his in- 
gratitude to England^'' &c. the index being made, in this 
manner, the vehicle of reproaches of a particular nature, 
more direct than are hazarded in the body of the volume. 

The Reviewers have not been content, in the article under 
consideration, with mangling the reputation of Fulton and his 
performances, but have turned aside to assail another Ameri- 
can, for whom his councry has claimed the merit of an im- 
portant invention. I allude to Godfrey, who is contemptu- 



', • They have, however, in their twentieth number miule Biitenlwuse an 
Enghshnian. The astronomer was born witliin seven miles of Philadelphia; 
and never absent from liis native country. His ancestors were of the banks 
of the Rhine. 

Vol. I.— M m 



il HOSTILITIES OF THE 

.RT I. oysiy mentioned in a note, and introduced in the text with 
greater indignity. The note is as follows — " A man of the 
name of Logan^ we think as obscure as Godfrey himself claimed 
for the latter^ the invention of Had ley'' s ^adrant ! — two years 
after the description of it had^ as he says^ appeared in the Phi- 
losophical Transactions.'''' The reference to Godfrey, in the 
text, is in this strain — " We are almost malicious enough to 
wish Franklin were alive, to see with what little ceremony 
his admiring countrymen have dove-tailed him in between 
two worthies, one of whom (Godfrey) he has himself desig- 
nated, in his correspondence, as a most dogmatical, overbear- 
ing, and disagreeable fellow, who gave himself airs because 
he had acquired a smattering of mathematics." 

Before I proceed to comment upon the note, which is too 
choice a specimen of the temper and knowledge which these 
Reviewers bring to the discussion of American affairs, to be 
suffered to remain without elucidation, I will beg leave to 
quote what Franklin has really said of Godfrey, in order that 
my reader may compare it at once with their report, and 
better understand the degree of reliance to be placed on their 
citations. It is not in his Correspondence, but in his Me- 
moirs, that Franklin speaks of Godfrey, and it is in these 
words " Among the first members of our Junto^ was Thomas 
Godfrey, a self-taught mathematician, great 'in his -way., and 
afterwnrds 'inventor ofrohat is 7iow called Hadley's Quadrant. 
But he knew little out of his way, and was not a pleasing 
companion ; as, like most great mathematicians I have met 
with, he expected universal precision in every thing said, and 
was for ever denying or distinguishing upon trifles, to the 
disturbance of all conversation. I continued to board with 
Godfrey, who lived in part of my house, with his wife and 
children, and had one side of the shop for his glazier's busi- 
ness, though he worked little, being always absorbed in ma- 
thematics." So much for the smattering of mathematics. 
And were the other parts of the pretended designation veri- 
fied, it would be difficult to perceive, what the habits of the 
mathematician in society, have to do with the question of 
the invention of the quadrant. 

The " man of the name of Logan, as obscure as Godfrey,'* 
can be no other than " the honourable and learned Mr. Logan" 
of whom Franklin also speaks in his Memoirs, and who, next 
to William Penn, makes the most considerable figure in the 
History of Pennsylvania: — whom the proprietary entrusted 
with the management of all his affairs in the province, and 
cherished through life as the ablest and most faithful of his 



BRITISH REVIEWS. f 

friends ; — who made valuable communications to the Royal SEC. "^ 
Society, three of which are to be found in one volume of 
its Transactions, the 38th;* whose charges as Chief yustice 
of Pennsylvania were reprinted and read with admiration, 
in London : who corresponded regularly with the most 
eminent among the scientific worthies of his time ; such as 
Linnaeus, Fabricius, Dr. Mead, Dr. Halley, Sir Hans Sloan, 
Dr, Fothergill, Peter Collinson, William Jones (father of 
Sir William :) and whom all consulted with the deference 
due to a mind of the first order in the variety and strength 
of its powers, and of indefatigable activity in the cultiva- 
tion and advancement of nearly every branch of knowledge. 
There is a striking similarity in the talents, studies, and vo- 
cation of Dr. Golden and James Logan ; and of the latter i 
think I may say, without exaggeration, that he was excelled 
in no respect by any one of the Europeans who settled on 
this continent ; and that if he is obscure^ none was better 
entitled to the most brilliant illustration. An ' honest 
chronicler,' Proud, with whose History of Pennsylvania the 
labourers for the American department in the Quarterly 
Review, ought not to be unacquainted, — has spoken of his 
*' living actions," and made a summary exposition of his 
character and career which I will copy for their instruction, 
vouching myself, from personal inquiry, for the accuracy of 
all the particulars. 

" fames Logan was descended of a family originally from 
Scotland, where, in the troubles of that country, occasioned by 
the affair of Earl Gozvrie^ in the reign of fames the VI, his 
grandfather, Robert Logan^ was deprived of a considerable 
estate ; in consequence of which, his father, Patrick Logan^ 
being in reduced circumstances, removed into Ireland^ and 
fixed his residence at Lurgan^ the place of his son fames' 
birth. Patrick LoganWaA the benefit of a good education, in 
the university of Edinburgh; where he commenced master of 
arts; — but afterwards joined in religious society with the 
^takers. — This, his son, fames Logan^ being endowed with 
a good genius, and favoured with a suitable education, made 
considerable proficiency in divers branches of learning and 
science ; after which he went to England; from whence, in 
the year 1699, and about the 25th of his age, he removed to 



* For the years 1733, 1734. One of the papers is entitled "Some experi- 
ments concerning the Impregnation of the Seeds of Plants;" another "Some 
thoughts concerning the Sun and Moon, when near tb« horizon, appearing 
larger than wheij near the zenith." See Note U. 



; HOSTILITIES OF THE 

iiT 1. Pennsylvania, in company with IVilUam Penn^ in his latter 
"^"^^-^ voyage to America; and in 1701, he was, by commission 
from the Proprietary, appointed secretary of the province, 
and clerk of the council for the same." 

*' He adhered to what was deemed the proprietary interest ; 
and exerted himself with great fidelity to it. He held the 
several offices of provincial secretary, commissioner of pro- 
perty, chief justice, and for near two years, governed the 
province, as president of the council." 

Many years before his death, he retired pretty much 
from the hurry and incumbrance of public affairs, and spent 
the latter part of his time, principally at Stanton^ his country 
seat, near Germcmtoxvn^ about five or six miles from Philadel- 
phia ; where he enjoyed, among his books, that leisure in 
which men of letters take delight, and corresponded with the 
literati in different parts of Europe. He was well versed in 
both ancient and modern learning, acquainted with the ori- 
ental tongues, a master of the Latin, Greek, French, and 
Italian languages ; deeply skilled in the mathematics, and in 
natural and morul philosophy ; as several pieces of his own 
writing, in Latin, &c. demonstrate; some of which have gone 
through divers impressions in different parts of Europe^ and 
are highly esteemed. Among his productions of this nature, 
his Experimenta 3Ieletemata de Plantariim GeJieratione^ or his 
Experiments on the Indian Corn or 3faize of America., with his 
observations arising therefrom, on the generation of plants, 
published in Latin, at Leyden., in 1739, and afterwards, in 
1747, republished in London, with an English version on the 
opposite page, by Dr. jf. Fothergill., ai-e both curious and in- 
genious. — Along with this piece ^yas likewise printed, in 
Latin, at Leyden., another treatise, by the same author, ei 
titled, ' Canonum pro inveniendis refractionum., turn simpliciut 
turn in lentibiis duplicium focis , devionstrationes geoinetricce.''' 
^^ Autore yacobo Logan, Judice supremo et Preside provinci 
Pensilvaniensis, in America.'''' And in his old age, he trand 
lated Cicero'' s excellent treatise, Z)e senectute,wh\ch,w\ih 
explanatory notes, was printed in Philadelphia, with a pr^ 
face or encomium, by Benjamin Franklin, afterwards Dij 
Franklin, of that city, in 1774. He was one of the peopl 
called Ridkers, and died on the 31st of October, 1751, agel 
about 77 years ; — leaving as a monument of his public spiri 
and benevolence to the people of Pennsylvania, a librai 
which he h;id been 50 years in collecting; (since called thi 
Loganiaii Library) intending it for the common use and bene- 
fit of all lovers of learning. It was said to contain the best 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

editions of the best books, in various languages, arts and SP-C. 
sciences, and to be the hirgest, and by far the most valua-^-^^^ 
ble, collection of the kind, at that time, in this part of the 
world." 

The reputation which James Logan deservedly enjoyed 
for a profound acquaintance with the mathematics, led God- 
frey to seek his notice and aid, and to consult him on his 
projects in mechanical philosophy. That of the improve- 
ment of Davis's Quadrant struck Logan as of the greatest 
ingenuity and importance ; and as Godfrey was then unknown 
beyond his native province, he undertook to be the herald 
and voucher of his invention with the philosophers of Lon- 
don. In the month of 3Iay^ 1 732, he addressed a letter on 
the subject, to Dr. Edmund Halley ; in which he described 
fully the construction and uses of Godfrey's instrument. 
The following passages of this letter explain his views of 
the case, and the motives and objects of his interposition. 

" I shall presume, from thy favour shown to me in England, 
in 1724, to communicate an invention that, whether it an- 
swer the end or not, will be allowed, I believe, to deserve 
thy regard. I have it thus." 

" A young man born in this country, Thomas Godfrey by 
name, by trade a glazier, who had no other education than to 
learn to read and write, with a little common arithmetic, 
having in his apprenticeship with a very poor man of that 
trade, accidentally met with a mathematical book, took such 
a fancy to the study, that, by the natural strength of his genius, 
without any instructor, he soon made himself master of that, 
and of every other of the kind he could borrow or procure in 
English ; and finding there was more to be had in Latin books, 
under all imaginable discouragements, applied himself to the 
study of that language, till he could pretty well understand 
an author on these subjects ; after which, the first time I ever 
saw or heard of him, to my knowledge, he came to borrow 
Sir Isaac Newton's Principia of me. Inquiring of him here- 
upon, who he was, I was indeed astonished at his request ; 
but, after a little discourse, he soon became welcome to that 
or any other book I had. This young man about 18 months 
s'lnce^ told me he had for some time been thinking of an in- 
strument for taking the distances of the stars by reflecting 
speculums, which he believed might be of service at sea ; 
and not long after he showed me a common sea quadrant, to 
which he had fitted two pieces of looking-glass in such a 
.manner as brought two stars at almost any distance to coin- 
■ cide. (Then follows a description of the instrument.) 

" But I am now sensible I have trespassed in being so 



8 HOSTILITIES OP THE 

RT I. particular when writing to Dr. Halley ; for I well know that 
to a gentleman noted for his excellent talent of reading, ap- 
prehending, and greatly improving, less would have been 
sufficient ; but, as this possibly may be communicated by 
thee, I shall crave leave farther to add, that the use of the 
instrument is very easy," &c. 

*■*' If the method of discovering the longitude by the moon 
is to meet with a reward, and this instrument, which, for all 
that I have ever read or heard of, is an invention altogether 
new, be made use of, in that case I would recommend the 
inventor to thy justice and notice. He now gets his own and 
family's bread (for he is married) by the labour of his own 
hands only, by that mean trade. He had beg^in to make ta- 
bles of the moon on the very same principles with thine, till I 
lately put a copy of those that have lain so many years print- 
ed, but not published, ivith W. Innys, into his hands, and then 
highly approving- them, he desisted^ 

In the same year, 1732, Godfrey prepared, himself, an ac- 
count of his invention, addressed to the Royal Society; but 
it was not then transmitted, from the expectation which he 
entertained of the effect of the letter to Halley. No notice, 
however, was taken of it by Halley, and after an interval of 
a year and a half, Logan resolved to have the matter sub- 
mitted immediately to the Royal Society. For this purpose 
he transmitted a copy of the letter, together with the paper of 
Godfrey, to Mr. Peter Collinson, an eminent botanist and 
member of the society, engaging him to lay them before 
that body. The result is detailed in the following authentic 
letter"* to Logan, from his respectable friend, Captain Wright, 
who took charge of his communications to Collinson. 

London, Feb. 4th, ir34. 

Mr. James Logan. 

Sir — Your favour of December 4th I have received, and 
immediately carried that inclosed to Mr. Collinson (Jan. 26) 
who with pleasure received that, as he had done the former; 
and after reading it, with an agreeable smile, he said, " I make 
no doubt of removing the uneasiness our good friend is under, 
which is all caused by some of Dr. Halley''s cunning.'''' He 
very much referred to the management of Mr. Jones's inte- 
rest, as well as using his own, to have your letters communi- 



• Taken from tlie original, in the possession of Dr. George Logan, the 
grandson of James Logan, and who forms one pretty notable exception at 
least, to the rule of the Quarterly Review — that " there is no such person 
known in America as si respectable country gentleman." 



BRITISH REVIEWS. % 

cated to the Royal Society in the most proper and likely SEC. "N 
manner to have effect. ' 

I soon found means to take a glass with Mr, Jones,* who 
gave me his company a whole afternoon ; when he often hinted 
at Dr. Halleifs ungenerous treatment of you., hut said that 7vas 
not the only time., for the doctor had been guilty of such things 
to others. He very strongly believes Mr. Hadley was the 
inventor of his own instrument, and gives these reasons to 
support it : That as he had dwelt so long on improving and 
bringing to perfection the reflecting telescope, he could not 
miss of knowing how to bring two objects to coincide by spe- 
culums ; and he as firmly believes Thomas Godfrey was the 
inventor of his instrument by the strength of his genius as Had- 
ley was of his by his help from the refecting telescope., and 
says each one ought to have the merit of his own instrument. 
He then asked me the use of the bow I brought him last year, 
and in what respect it exceeded Davis's quadrant ? I told him 
as far as I could, but that for my own part I had never used 
it. He was pleased with the invention, and said it deserved 
notice, if it answered what was proposed, and desired I would 
get one made ; for it would signify nothing to mention it to the 
society, without a model ; and that, being produced, would be 
a strong voucher for Thomas Godfrey, to show that he had a 
capacity and a genius tending that way ; and it would be a 
very good introduction for the reading of your letter to Dr. 
Halley. I got one made in two days, and carried it to Mr. 
Collinson (30th Jan.) who sent it to Sir Hans Sloan's ; where 
it underwent an examination by four or five members, one of 
which was Mr. Hadley, who, with the others, highly approved 
of it. The next day it was produced to the Royal Society, 
where Mr. Norris and myself were introduced by Mr. Collin- 
son ; and upon reading the description of the bow, I had the 
pleasure of hearing your first letter to Dr. Halley read, which 
was all that was then read ; and when done, Mr. Machen ad- 
dressed the president (or the gentleman who supplied his 
place ; for Sir H. Sloan was not there, being absent upon ac- 
count of his brother-in-law's death), and said he had the 
vouchers ready on the table for any one'*s perusal^ -who might 
doubt of the truth of that letter., or the instrument being ge- 
nuine, ^nd no ways taken from Mr. Hadley's, but found out 
about the same time that his was, or rather prior to it, if the 
vouchers were true ; and if they are not, then, said he, '' we 

• Father of the celebrated Sir William Jones, and an eminent mathema- 
tician. 



HOSTILITIES OP THE 

^ I- must believe that all the people of Pennsylvania are combinetj 
to impose on the society — which no reasonable man can do." 
He said some shreivd things of Dr. Halley^ and concluded with 
saying that the inventor claimed the justice of having that 
description registered, which he thought no one could deny 
him ; and should that instrument be the park for the longi- 
tude, the inventors of the rest must dispute their priority 
before the learned in law. No person said any thing against 
itf so that it will be registered. Mr. Williams has been under 
some pain for these two transactions, as miscarried in Jones's 
hands, but hope he has cleared it up to your satisfaction. If 
not, I am certain of doing it on my arrival. 

My hearty desires for yours and your good family's health, 
to whom my best respects. I am, dear sir, 

Your obliged humble servant, 

Edward Wright. 

In the month of June, 1734, Mr. Logan addressed to the 
Royal Society, " A further Account of Thomas Godfrey's 
Improvement of Davis's Quadrant transferred to the Mari- 
ner's Bow," which, under this title, was inserted implicitly in 
the volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society for the 
same year.* I proceed to extract some parts of Logan's 
paper, which develop further the history of the case. 

" Being informed that this improvement, proposed by 
Godfrey, of this place, for observing the sun's altitude at 
sea, with more ease and expedition than is practicable by 
the common instrument in use for that purpose, was last 
winter laid before the Royal Society, in his own description 
of it, and that some gentlemen wished to see the benefit in- 
tended by it more fully and clearly explained, I, who have 
here the opportunity of knowing the author's thoughts on such 
subjects, being persuaded in my judgment, that, if the in- 
strument, as he proposes it, be brought into practice, it will 
in many cases, be of great service to navigation, have, there- 
fore, thought it proper to draw up a more full account of it 
than the author himself has given," &c. 

" Some masters of vessels, who sail from hence to the West 
Indies, have got some of them made, as well as they can be 
done here, and have found so great advantage in the facility, 
and the ready use of them in those southerly latitudes, that^ 
they reject all others. It is now four years since Thoma^^ 
Godfrey hit on this improvement : for his account of it, laid 

* Month of December. A-rticle 3d. 



BRirrSH REVIEWS. 

before the society last winter, in which he mentioned two SEC. 
years, was wrote in 1732 ; and in the same year, 1730, after v,-^- 
he was satisfied in this of a real improvement in the quadrant, 
he applied himself to think of the other, viz. the reflecting 
instrument by speculums, for a help in the case of longitude, 
though it is also useful in taking altitudes ; and one of these, 
as has been abundantly proved by the maker, and those who 
had it with them, was taken to sea, and there used in ob- 
serving the latitude, the winter of that year, and brought 
back to Philadelphia before the end of February, 1731, and 
was in my keeping some months immediately after." 

" It was indeed unhappy, that, having it in my power, see- 
ing he had no acquaintance nor knowledge of persons in Eng- 
land, that I transmitted not an account of it sooner. But I had 
other affairs of more importance to me ; and it was owing to 
an accident which gave me some uneasiness, viz. his attempt- 
ing to publish some account of it in print here, that I trans- 
mitted it at last, in May, 1732, to Dr. Halley, to whom I made 
no doubt but the invention would appear entirely new; and 
I must own I could not but wonder that our good will at least 
was never acknowledged. This, on my part, was all the merit 
I had to claim, nor did I then, or now, assume any other in 
either of these instruments. I only wish that the ingenious 
inventor himself might, by some means, be taken notice of, 
in a manner that might be of real advantage to him." 

In his letter to the Royal Society, Godfrey expresses him- 
self in the simple and natural manner which bespeaks entire 
sincerity. He begins thus — " Gentlemen : As none are bet- 
ter able than the Royal Society to prove and judge whether 
svich inventions as are proposed for the advancing useful 
knowledge will answer the pretensions of the inventors or not; 
and as I have been made acquainted, though at so great a dis- 
tance, of the candour of your learned Society in giving en- 
couragement to such as merit approbation, I have, therefore, 
presumed to lay before the Societ)^, the following, craving par- 
ion for my boldness." He then states that finding with what 
iifficulty a tolerable observation of the sun was taken by 
Davis's quadrant; he, therefore, applied his thoughts for up- 
svards of two years, to find a certain instrument. After de- 
jcribing his improvement and the extent of its utility, he con- 
cludes with the following phrase — " I hope Dr. Halley has 
'eceived a more full account of this from J. Logan, Esq.; 
herefore I shall add no more than that I am, &c." 

Neither Logan nor Godfrey knew at the date of these com- 
nunications, that Mr. John Hadlev, the vice-president of the 
1 Vol. I.~N n 



HOSTILITIES or THE 

I- Royal Society, had presented a paper to that body, dated May 
*^ 13th, 1731,* containing a full description and rationale of a 
reflecting quadrant of the same character, which he claimed 
as his invention, and that his paper was inserted in the volume 
of the Philosophical Transactions, for that year. This com- 
munication of Hadley is the foundation of his title to the in- 
vention. There is no direct proof, which I can discover, of 
his having seen, or heard of Godfrey's instrument ; but the 
quotations which I have made establish the following facts — 
that Godfrey, without the advantage of a hint, or of aid from 
any quarter, completed it in the year 1730 ; that it was taken 
to sea soon after, and there used, in the course of the winter 
of that year, in observing the latitude, and brought back be- 
'fore the end of February, 1731 ; that there was, therefore, a 
possibility of its being made known to Hadley, within good 
time for the prepai-ation of his paper of the month of May. 

The tradition in Philadelphia is, that it was carried to Ja- 
maica by a captain of Godfrey's acquaintance, and shown there 
to a captain of a ship just departing for England, who gave 
information of it to Hadley, as a person distinguished for his 
skill and ingenuity in the construction and improvement of 
optical instruments. Be this as it may, the merit of priority, 
such as it is, lies manifestly with Godfrey ; his invention was 
as complete, and passed quickly into use among the American 
masters of vessels. Mr. Logan could have no imaginable 
motive except benevolence and the promotion of science, for 
producing and urging the claims of Godfrey ; he expressly 
disavows any pretension to a share in the invention ; his emi- 
nent capacity to judge of its character precludes all idea of 
his having been deceived, as the elevation of his nature and 
station does that of his having stooped to practise a decep- 
tion. It will be seen, by an extract which I am about to make 
from one of his letters, of a later date, to the mathematician 
Wm. Jones, that he retained his perouasion of Godfrey's 
title, and was not without suspicion of foul play. 

" I have very little to say on the subject of instruments, but 
as in thy teaching, I formerly observed thy methods greatly 
excelled in neatness, so one instrument may for speed and 
certainty very much exceed another ; and Thomas Godfrey's 
inventions were, I think, truly valuable, that by the reflecting 
speculums appears extremely so. I have here seen two ol 
them as made by Hadley' s direction, who enjoys both the re- 

• The volume of the Transactions hi which it is contained, was not, in 
fact, published, until after the date of Logan's Letters. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. g 

putation and profit of them, and I cannot but admire at it. SEC. V 
Thomas Godfrey has indeed a fine genius for the mathema- 
tics, and it would, for the sake of his birth place, which is 
the same as that of my own children, be a great pleasure to 
me to see him rewarded." 

The quotation which I have made from Franklin, shows 
that he ascribed the quadrant called Hadle3^'s, to Godfrey; and 
as he at one time lived under the same roof with the mathe- 
matician, and constantly took an interest in his affairs, his 
testimony is of no little moment. We have a decided opinion 
to the same effect, from another of his cotemporaries, Dr. 
John Ewing, a provost of the University of Pennsylvania, 
and one of the most acute and learned mathematicians whom 
this country has produced.* Dr. Rittenhouse, when re- 
quested to pronounce in the matter, stated in writing, " that 
he knew Mr. Godfrey and his quadrant, and had no doubt 
both Godfrey and Hadley were original inventors ; that both 
instruments depended upon the same principles," &c. A 
weight of authority is thus found in favour of Godfrey's merit, 
sufficient to satisfy us on this side of the Atlantic. If we 
claim no more for him than the having accomplished simul- 
taneously the same as is ascribed to Hadley, we shall have 
.reason to be proud of his name ; and, in comparing the cir- 
jCumstances of his education and situation with those of the 
.vice-president of the Royal Society, be entitled to attribute 
to him a superior, nay almost unrivalled natural genius. It 
;is related that when Newton's Principia Mathematica made 
.their appearance, " the best mathematicians were obliged to 
fstudy them with care, and those of a lower rank durst not 
venture upon them, till encouraged by the testimonies of the 
ilearned." The American glazier, without encouragement 
(from any quarter, wholly self-taught in the mathematics and 
iji the Latin, ventured upon, and mastered this great work at 
fin early age; and finally, with the embarrassments of an hum- 
ble trade, and extreme poverty, produced the most useful of 
astronomical instruments. He may have been, in the courtly 

.' * See a paper of Dr. Ewing^ in the 1st vol. of the Transactions of A. P. S.; 
lescribing an improvement of his own in the construction of Godfrey's quad- 
pant. He calls it the most useful of all astronomical instruments, the world 
sVer knew. There is also, inserted in the American periodical work, the 
Ptort Folio, for Dec. 1817, a letter of Dr. Ewing, in which he says, "Logan 
•jives a full description of the reflecting insU'ument Mr. Godfrey construct- 
ed, which appears to be the very instrument now in common use ; some very 
:rifling differences in the construction only excepted; which might have been 
Tiade by Mr. Hadley, and which are hardly worth the mentioning in the in- 
dention of such an excellent and uncommon instrument." 



J HOSTILITIES OP THE 

T r. language of the Quarterly Review, " a dogmatical, overbear- 
ing and disagreeable fellow;" but he must still attract the high- 
est admiration for the strength of his intellectual powers, and 
the resolution and perseverance of his spirit. Let his coun- 
trymen, universally, attach his name to the quadrant, and in 
the course of a few ages, the race between the names of Had- 
ley and Godfrey will end in the same manner as the rivalry 
of the British and American nations in numbers, power, and 
consideration. 

There is not the least colour, even for the supposition, that 
the American mathematician drew the notion of his improve- 
ment upon Davis's quadrant, from an external source; every 
circumstance imposes the belief that it was entirely the pro- 
duct of his own genius and combinations. This is not the 
case, however, with respect to Hadley, though we should dis- 
miss from the question, the possibility of his being indebted 
to Godfrey's labours. I do not know but that the Quarterly 
Reviewers may consider the authority which I am about to 
cite — Dr. Hutton, F. R. S. of London and Edinburgh, and 
Emeritus Professor of mathematics in the Royal Military 
Academy at Woolwich — quite as obscure as Logan and God- 
frey. Nevertheless, I will venture to appeal to his Mathema- 
tical and Philosophical Dictionary, in which, at the article 
Quadrant, I find the following statement. 

*' Hadley's Quadrant. So called from its inventor, John 
Hadley, Esq. is now universally used, as the best of any for 
nautical and other observations. It seems the first idea of this 
excellent instrument was suggested by Dr. Hoolre ; for Dr.^ 
Sprat, in his History of the Royal Society, p. 246, mentions 
the invention of a new instrument for taking angles by reflec- 
tion, by which means the eye at once sees the two objects 
both as touching the same point, though distant almost to a 
semi-circle ; which is of great use for making exact observa- 
tions at sea. This instrument is described and illustrated by 
a figure in Hooke's posthumous works, p. 503. But as it ad- 
mitted of only one reflection, it would not answer the pur-? 
pose. The matter^ hoivever^ rvas at last ejected by Sir Isaac 
Nervton^ who cotnmtmicated to Dr. Halleij a paper of his oxvn 
•writings containing the description of an instrument with two 
reflections, which soon after the doctor's death was found 
among his papers by Mr. Jones, by whom it was communi- 
cated to the Royal Society, and it was published in the Phi- 
losophical Transactions for the year 1742. How it happened 
that Dr. Halley never mentioned this in his life time^ is difficult 
to account for ; more especially as Mr. Hadley had described^ 



BRITISH REVIEWS. ;• 

in the TV ans actions for 1731, his instrument which is con- SEC. a 
structed on the same principles.^ Mr. Hadley, who was well ^^^"^ 
acquainted with Sir Isaac Newton, might have heard him 
say, that Dr. Hooke's proposal could be effected by means of 
a double reflection; and perhaps in consequence of this hint, 
he might apply himself, without any previous knowledge of 
what Newton had actually done, to the construction of his 
instrument. Mr. Godfrey, too, of Pennsylvania, had re- 
course to a similar expedient ; for which reason some gen- 
: tlemen of that colony have ascribed the invention of this 
excellent instrument to him. The truth may probably be., that 
each of these g^entleinen discovered the method independent of 
! one another.'''* 

The opinion thus liberally and decorously expressed by Dr. 
Hutton, was, without doubt, that of the Royal Society in 
1733, when the whole matter was brought under their con- 
sideration. Otherwise, they never would have consented to 
I admit into the volume of their Transactions, the paper of 
j Logan, after they had published that of Hadley. The Q.uar- 
! terly Review has attributed to Logan — how accurately let the 
1 reader now decide — the avowal that two years had elapsed 
since the appearance of Hadley's paper, when he preferred 
I the claim of Godfrey. But, admitting the interval to be so 
i great, if we admit also, the facts, of which there can be no 
I doubt, — that Godfrey's instrument was completed in 1 730, 
and that Logan, when he communicated the invention to Dr. 
Halley, in 1732, believed, as he asserts, that it would appear 
entirely new to Halley — the delay in the communication of it, 
which Logan at the same time satisfactorily explains, can fur- 
nish no argument nor presumption against the validity of God- 
frey's claim. The dispute between Sir Isaac Newton and Leib- 
nitz, concerning the invention of the method of fluxions, 



<* If we consider the character which Halley bore, according' to the state- 
ment of captain Wright; his silence with respect to Newton's paper; and 
the suppression of Logan's letter — the conviction forces itself upon the mind, 
that he had resolved to secure the credit of the invention to Hadley. By 
the History of the Royal Society, we find that on the first of September, 
1732, after the receipt of Logan's letter, Halley volunteered to attend, on 
the part of the Society, a trial at sea, of lladley's quadrant, and reported in 
its favour, without giving the least intimation of his knowledge of the con- 
ception or completion of the instrument in any other quarter. The paper of 
Newton is inserted in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 465, p. 155, with 
the description — " \ true copy of a pauer, in the hand writing of Sir Isaac 
Newton, found amon;< lio papers of Ih? late Dr. Hallev, containing a de- 
scriptio't of an instrument for observing the moon's distance from the fixed 
.stars at sea." 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

^ '• presents a case similar to the present in several respects. 

"^^ Newton published his method only in 1704, after Leibnitz 
had given his Differential Calculus to the world. The 
former traced his invention to the years 1665, 1666 ; and 
the Royal Societ)^ decided in his favour upon this ground. 
The scientific world at large has acquiesced in the opinion, 
that the credit of origination is due to both these illustrious 
philosophers ; and such, in all likelihood, will be its conclu- 
Siion in regard to Godfrey and Hadley. 

"J 3. We might have expected from the Quarterly Review 
about the same degree of scrupulosity in eulogizing England 
and its condition, as in defaming the United States. But it 
•was natural to look for more consistency in the one case than 
we have found in the other. Here we shall be disappointec 
to an extent which is truly marvellous, and which destroys all 
confidence in any of the generalities so profusely sown in the 
pages of that journal. I must be permitted to bring together^ 
some of the many passages establishing the instructive facti 

*' Since man has ceased to exist in the patriarchal state, 
he has no where, nor at any period, existed in so favourable 
a condition, as in England at the present time." " England 
is of all parts of the world, the most prosperous and the most 
happy, blest above all countries, either of the ancient or the 
modern world." (No. 31, 1817.) 

" England is basking in the broad sunshine of peace and 
prosperity. England wants nothing but thankfulness ; no- 
thing but a due sense of the mercies which are heaped upon 
her with an unsparing hand." (No. o7^ 1818.) 

" England, in the full gloi'v of arts and arms, in the pleni- 
tude of her strength and exuberance of her wealth, in her 
free government and pure faith, just lazvs and uncorntpted 
manners ^T^whYic prosperity ixr\& private happiness ; England, in 
each and all of these respects, presents an object not to be 
paralleled in past ages or in other countries, — an object which 
fills with astonishment the understanding mind, and which the 
philosopher and the Christian may contemplate not only with 
complacency, but with exultation, with the deepest gratitude 
to the Giver of all good, and the most animating hopes for the 
further prospects and progress of mankind." (April, 1816.) 

" The great mass of our population is in a state which renders them the 
easy dupes of every mischievous demagogue." " The English are -in un- 
educated people." (No. 31, 1816.) " The abuse of the press is the curse of 
English liberty." (Ibid) 

" The London theatres are disgraced Ly open and scandalous immorali- 
ties." (Ibid.) 



■ BRITISir REVIEWS, ^1 

^' The next generation may see gi-ass growing in the now populous city of sec. "VI 
Nottingham, tVom the outrages of the L\iddites." (Ibid.) 

♦'.Those who suffered, for the agricultural riots, under the sentence of the 
law, were men of substance." 

" The men who grow corn are never the men who set fire to it. A large 
proportion of the misled multitude, who have been burning barns and corn- 
stacks, woidd have been aiding the civil power to repress these frantic out- 
r.iges, if tliey had had their own little j)roperty to defend. Let us not de- 
ceive ourselves ! Governments are safe in proportion as thegi-eat body of the 
people are cont(?lited, and men cannot be contented when they work with 
t/ie prospect ofivant and pauperism hcfove ilcelv eyes, as whatvutst be their destinij 
at last." (April, 1816.) 

" In the road which the English labourer must travel, the poor-house 
is the last stage on tlie way to the grave. Hence it arises, as a natural re- 
sult, that looking to the parisli as his ultimate resource, and as that to which 
he must come at last, he cares not how soon he applies to it. There is 
neither hope nor pride to withliold him : why should he deny himself any 
indulgence in youth, or why make any efforts to put oft' for a little while 
that which is inevitable at tlie end ? That the labouring poor feel thus, and 
reason thus, and act in consequence, is beyond all doubt." (No. 29.) 

" There can be no doubt, that Christian slaves are subject to much harsh 
treatment, and especially in Algiers: but ?io Englishman has been made a slave .• 
and before we go out of the way to seek for objects of misery abroad, it would 
be wise and humane to relieve those which we have at home. One would 
think that the general distress in the agricultural and manufacturing classes ; 
the state of the poor — the prisons — the hospitals and mad houses ; would 
supply us with abundant objects to relieve the plethora of philanthropy with 
which we seern to be bursting." (Ibid.) 

" If adversity be favourable to the development of our virtues, (and in- 
deed many of oiu* noblest qualities would never be developed under any other 
discipline,) there is a degree of misery which is fatal to them, and which 
hardens the heai't as mucii as manual labour indurates the skin, and destroys 
all finer sense of touch. (Ibid.) 

" Mournful as this is, it is far more mournful to contemplate the effects of 
extreme poverty in the midst of a civilized and flourishing society. The 
wretched native of Terra del Fuego, or of the nortliern extremity of Ame- 
rica, sees nothing around him which aggravates his own wretchedness by 
comparison ; the chief fares no better than the rest of the horde, and the 
slave no worse than his master ; the privations which they endure are com- 
mon to all ; they know of no state happier than their own, and submit to 
their miserable circumstances as to a law of nature. But in a country like 
ours, there exists a contrast which continually forces itself upon the eye 
and upon the reflective faculty. There was a methodist dabbler in art, who, 
in the days of our childhood, used to edify the public with allegorical prints 
from the great manufactory of Carrington Bowles ; one of these curious 
compositions represented a human figure, of which the right side was 
dressed in the full fashion of the day, while the left was undressed to the 
very bones, and displayed a skeleton. The conti-ast in this worse than 
Mezentian imagination is not more frightful, than that between health and 
squalid pauperism, who ai-e every day josthng each other in the street." 
(Ibid.) 

" It is but too true we fear, that, within the last thirty years, a consider- 
able degradation of moral character, has been observable among the lower 
ranks of society ; we wish we could say that it mounted no higher. The 
ostentatious display of charitable donations, posted in front of the public 
newspapers, would seem to have subdued that pride and independence of 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

feeling, which would once have shrunk from being held up as the objecls 
of such charity." 

•' The labouring people of Scotland live chiefly on potatoes and oat-meal. — 
In the nortliern counties of England, these furnish the principal part oi" 
every meal, and it is well known that nine-tenths of the population of Irelami 
subsist almost entirely upon them." (No. 24.) 

" The article of fish is a luxury in all the great cities and towns of the 
empire; is confined to the upper ranks of society." (Ibid.) 

" The prices of provisions in London are shamefully kept up by monopo- 
lies, arising out of overgrown capitals." (Ibid.) 

" The sudden stoppage of any particular branch of manufacture usually 
.sends multitudes to the poor-house." (Ibid.) 

"In some parts of England, the paupers average nearly one-fourth of the 
population." (Ibid.) 

; " The recent parliamentary enquiry has shown that there are from 120 to 
130,000 children in the metropolis without the means of education, 4,000 of 
whom are let out by their parents to beggars, or employed in pilfering. 
A like p-oportion wcniUl be found in all our large cities, and throughout the manu- 
factiirivg districts a far greater." (No. 29.) 

" When we have stated upon the authority of Parliament that there are 
above 130,000 children in London, who are at this time without the means 
of education, and that there are from three to four thousand who are let out 
to beggars and trained up in dishonesty, — even this represents 07ify a part of 
the evil; if the children are vifithout education, the parents are without reli- 
gion ; in the metropolis of this enlightened nation, the church to whicli they 
should belong has provided for them no places of worship; and • tivo-thirJs 
of the lower order of people in London,' Sir Thomas Bernard says, 'live as 
utterli/ ignorant of the doctrines and duties of Clmstianitt/, and are as errant and 
Tinconverted pagans, as if they had existed in the wildest part of Jifiica* The 
case is the same in Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield, and in all our large 
io-ons ; the greatest part of o%ir manufacturing popidace, of the miners and col- 
lier*, are in the same condition, and if they are not universally so, it is more ow- 
ing to the zeal of the methodists than to any other cause." (Ibid.) 

Most of the paragraphs just quoted refer to the year 1816 : 
and lest it should be supposed that the representation of this 
journal concerning the state of English affairs at home, might 
be, at a later period, altogether of an opposite complexion, 
I will make some further quotations from the number for 
September, 1818, and take them from the article immediately 
preceding the one in which it is said that "England wants 
absolutely nothing- but thankfulness." 

" Children are daily to be seen in hundreds and thousands about the 
streets of London, brought up in misery and mendicity, first, to every kind 
of suffering, afterwards to every kind of guilt, the boys to theft, the girls to 
prostitution, and this not from accidental causes, but from an obvious defect 
in our institutions ! Throxighout all our great citiesy throughoiit all our jnanvfac- 
turing counties, the case is the same as 171 the capital. And this public and no- 
torious evil, this intolerable reproach, has been going on year after year, in- 
creasing as our prosperity has increased, but in an accelerated ratio. If this 
•were regarded by itself alone, distinct from ai! other evils and causes of evil, 
it might well excite shame for the past, a.stonishment for the present, and ap- 
prehension for the future ; but if it be regarded in connection with the in- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. gj 

crease cf pauperism, the condition of the manufacturing populace, and the SEC. VJ 
indefatigable zeal with which the most pernicious principles of every kind Vi^^v^ 
are openly disseminated, in contempt and defiance of the law and of all 
things sacred, the whole would seem to form a fund of vice, misery, and 
wickedness, by which not only our wealth, power, and prosperit}', but all 
that constitutes the pride, all that constitutes the happiness of the British 
nation is in danger of being absorbed and lost." 

" Tlie sternest republican that ever Scotland produced was so struck by 
this reflection, that he chd not hesitate to wish for the re-establishment of do- 
mestic slavery, as a remedy for the squalid wretchedness and audacious guilt 
with which his country was at that time overrun." 

" So little provision has been made for religious and moral education 
in our institutions, and so generally is it neglected by individuals as well 
as by the state, that the youth in humble life, who has been properly in- 
'structed in his duty towards God and man, may be regarded as imusually 
'brtunate. The populace hi England are more ignorant of their religious 
duties than they are in any other Christian country." 

" They who reflect upon the course of society in this coimtry, cannot, in- 
leed, but perceive that the opportunities and temptations to evil have great- 
y increased, while the old restraints, of every kind, have as generally fallen 
iito disuse. The stocks are now as commonly in a state of decay as the 
narket-cross ; and while the population has doubled upon the church esta- 
ilishment, the munAer of ale-houses has increased tenfold in proportion to the 
population." 

\ " What then are the causes of pauperism ? misfortune in one instance, 
nisconduct in fifty; want of frugality, want of forethought, want of prudence, 
vant of principle ; — -want of hope also shoidd be added." 

I " To work a reformation in the metropolis, indeed, is a task that might 
lismay Hercules himself; a huge Augean stable, which the whole Thames 
lath not water enough to cleanse ! Yet the gi-eater the evil, the more 
;rgent is the necessity and duty of setting about the gi-eat business of re- 
aoving it as far as we may. The points to be considered are, in what man- 
,er we may hope to efl^ect the greatest alleviation of human misery, to 
litigate the sufferings of the poor, to amend their morals, and to redress. 
heir wrongs. Let no man think the expression is overcharged. If any hu- 
jan creatures, born in the midst of a highly civilized country, are yet, by 
le circumstances of their birth and breeding, placed in a worse condition, 
oth as physical and moral beings, than they would have been had they been 
orn among the .savages of America or Australia ; the society in which they 
ve has not done its duty towards them : they are aggrieved by the esta- 
lished system of things, being made amenable to its laws, and having re- 
sived none of its benefits : till this be rectified, the scheme of polity is in- 
jtnplete, and while it exists to any e.xtent, as it notoriously does exist at thi9 
me, ill this country, the foundation of social order is insecure," 

" It is said among the precious fragments of king Edward, that when 
'ayers had been, with good consideration set forth, the people must con- 
nually be alliu-ed to hear them; instead of this, a great proportion are. 
ptually excluded, for all the churches in the metropolis, -with all the private 
lapels aiul conventicles of every description added to them, are not sujfficient to 
"■.commodate a fourth part of the inhabitants, upon the present system of con- 
icting public worship." 

" Forty or fifty years ago, murder was so rarely committed in this coun- 
y.that any person who has amused himself with looking over the magazines 
'Registers of those times, miglit call to mind eveiy case that occuiTed 
iring ten or twenty years, more easily than he could recollect those of the 
1 it twelve months; for scarcely a weekly newspaper comes from the press 
ithout its taic of blood. And as tlie cilsis becomes more frequent, it ha-s 

Vol I.— O o 



I HOSTILITIES OF THE 

T I. been marked, if that be possible, with more ferociousness, as If there were 
not only an increase of criminals, but as if guilt itself was assuming a more 
malignant and devilish type." 

" Looking, however, to those causes which are within reach of disci- 
pline and law, certain it is, that the increase of crimes is attributable in no 
slight degree to the abominable state of our prisons, which, for the most 
part, have hitherto been nurseries of licentiousness, and schools of guilt, 
rather than places of correction, so that the young offender comes out of 
confinement in every respect worse than he went in." 

9. The two presiding reviews of Great Britain having 
put the American people vmder the ban, those of the second 
rank naturally followed so grateful an example. I do not 
know whether I ought to apply this description to the " Bri- 
tish Review, or London Critical Journal," a quarterly pub- 
lication, which, in general, is marked by nearly an equal 
degree of learning and ability with its predecessors. It 
maintains the same principles, religious and political, as the 
Quarterly, and has, of course, entered the lists against the 
American republic. The number for May, 1819, contains 
a copious article, headed " Actual Condition of the United 
States," and pretended to be drawn from the late works on 
this country. I have only to cull some passages from the 
article, to show what a rich source of correct information 
and benevolent temper has been opened to the British pub- 
lic, in the London Critical Journal. 

" The government of Washington, identifying extent of 
territory with actual power and future greatness, continues 
to add lands to the immense provinces which it already ' 
possesses ; it eagerly embraces every opportunity, arising' ;.l 
from the weakness or misfortunes of its neighbours, to 
provide fields for remote generations, who, it flatters itself, 
will one day outstrip all other nations in warlike exploits 
and commercial wealth, under the auspicious stars of the 
Union. The present rulers of America appear to think that 
they shall favour most successfully the rising fortunes of 
their country by procuring soil whereon American heroes 
and lawgivers may spring up in their order to fulfil their 
high destinies." 

*' In the United States, a debt contracted in one state can-- .,ij 
not be sued for in the next; and a man who has committed i" 
murder in Virginia, cannot be apprehended if he make his 
way into the neighbouring lands of Kentucky."* 

* " The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and 
Immunities of citizens in the several states. 

" A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who 
"shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall, on the demand ol 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 2 

" The states of America can never have a native literature SEC. "V 
^ny more than they can have a native character. Even their ^■^~>^ 
wildernesses and deserts, their mountains, lakes, and forests, 
will produce nothing romantic or pastoral ; no ' native wood- 
note wild' will ever be heard from their prairies or savan- 
nahs; for these remote regions are only relinquished by pagan 
savages to receive into their deep recesses hordes of dis- 
contented democrats, mad, unnatural enthusiasts, and needy 
or desperate adventurers." 

" The steam-boat was hatched in Great Britain, and only 
acquired some small additional strength of pinion upon its 
migration across the Atlantic." 

[ "We are informed that experiments of sailing ships by 
means of steam were publicly exhibited on the Forth and 
Clyde canal in 1787; and were either actually witnessed by 
Mr. Fulton, or communicated to that engineer, who was 
then a resident in that part of Scotland^ of zuhich he ivas un- 
\derstood to be a native. In answer to some enquiries which 
tve have made personally on this subject, we were told that 
[Fulton was a native of Paisley^ in the neighbourhood of which 
■place, he had steam-boats constructed, actually employed 
[both for experiment and use, and that he afterwards carried 
the invention to America," &c. 

•' In the southern parts of the Union, the rites of our holy 
faith are almost never practised." 

" When the American captains could not fight to advan- 
tage, during the last war, they ran away and in some instan- 
'^es most shamefully . Their Frolic^ for instance, after vainly 
endeavouring to escape by flight, surrendered to the Orpheus 
md Shelburne, without firing a single shot."* 

' The Americans may become a powerful people, but they 



he executive authority of the state, from which he fled, be dehvered up, to 
)e removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime." — Constitution of 
he United States, Article IV. Sect. 2. 

• 'i'lie United States sloop of war, Frolic, referred to by the British Re- 
iew, mounted, according to the British official report of the capture, only 20 
funs. The British ships, Orpheus and Shelburne, which captured her, after 
I long chase, are rated in Steele's list, the first at 36 guns, the other at 14. It 
vas certainly the duty of the American commander to endeavour to escape 
torn such a superiority of force. If he did not fire a shot, when overtaken, it 
vas because he had thrown his guns and ammunition ovei-board to facilitate 
(is flight. This is stated in the Britisli Report above mentioned. The 
'.harge brought against the American captain \n tiiis instance, on the ground 
if his attempt to escape by flight, must appear ridiculous to all who arc ac- 
luaintedwith naval history and affairs. 



I HOSTILITIES OF THE 

RT I. want the elements of greatness ; they may overrun a portion 
'v^-' of the world, but they will never civilize those whom they con- 
quer ; they may become the Goths of the Western Continent, 
but they can never become the Greeks. The mass of the North 
Americans are too proud to learn, and too ignorant to teach, 
and having established by act of Congress that they are alrea- 
dy the most enlightened people of the world, they bid fair to 
retain their barbarisin from mere regard to consistency," &c. 

The barkings of the innumerable minor Reviews and Ma- 
gazines are incessant, and may be compared to those of the 
prairie dog, of which we read in the accounts of the Missouri 
region. They deserve as little to be heeded. I will, how- 
-4 ever, advert to one of them — the British Critic-^-co-ordinate 
with the Monthly Review, and long in the enjoyment of great 
consideration with the ministerial and high-church party. It 
has recently had a paroxysm of exprobration, on the occasion 
of reviewing Mr. Bristed's " Resources of America." This 
gentleman, a Briton by birth, educated at home, it has, like 
the London Critical Journal, mistaken, or affected to mistake 
for an American, and in reviling the diction of his book, 
has held him forth as a sample of American writers. If an 
author so affectionately and reverentially disposed towards 
England, fared so ill, for allowing some virtue and prosperity 
to the United States, these unlucky States had nothing less to 
expect than a merciless visitation. I would not undertake to 
repeat any part of the pasquinades of the British Critic, were : 
it not that they form a proper sequel to those of the Quarterly ' 
Review, and complete the idea to be entertained of the : 
strain in which we are celebrated in the British journals ge- 
nerally. The following extracts will suffice. 

" The Americans debated in Congress, during three sue- • 
cessive days, whether they were not the greatest, the wisest, 
bravest, most ingenious, and most learned of mankind." 

" The North American republicans are the most vain, 
egotistical, insolent, rodomontade sort of people that are any 
where to be found. They give themselves airs.'''' 

" The Americans have no history ; nothing on which to 
exercise genius and kindle imagination." 

" One-third of the people have no church at all. Three i 
and an half millions enjoy no means of religious instruction, ij 
The religious principle is gaining ground in the northern '' 
parts of the Union : it is becoming fashionable among the 
better orders of society to go to church." 

" The greater number of states declare it to be unconstitu- 



BRITISH REVIEWS, 

tional to refer to the providence of God in any of their pub- SEC 
lie acts." 

" The Americans make it a point of conscience never to 
pay a single stiver to a British creditor." 

" America is like a dissipated boy, combining the feeble- 
ness of early youth, with the libertinism of manhood ; the 
calculating selfishness of declining years, with the decrepi- 
tude and disease of old age." 

" America is easy to conquer^ but difficult to keep," Sec. &c. 

Ribaldry of this description, which, by its absurdness, 
softens the indignation it is fitted to excite, can require no 
annotation. But I think it well to examine at once the topic 
of the first paragraph quoted from the British Critic, — one 
which has now the additional disrelish of triteness, in any 
English publication ; so often has it exercised the wit, or 
provoked the spleen, of parliamentary orators and periodical 
censors. We have seen that the Edinburgh Review talks of 
"the ludicrous proposition of the American Congress to de- 
clare herself the most enlightened nation on the globe." The 
Quarterly Review also, in the critique of Inchiquin's Letters, 
descants scoflingly on this supposed proposition, and avers 
that it was withdrawn " only through fear of giving umbrage 
to the French Convention.'''' Mr. Alexander Bai-ing refers to it, 
in his pamphlet on the Orders in Council, saying, that "the 
Americans gravely debated once in Congress, whether they 
should style themselves the most enlightened people in the 
world ;" but he tempers the pungency of the allusion, by re- 
lating how a distinguished member of the House of Com- 
mons, Mr. Wilberforce, seriously declared in his place, and 
was no doubt as seriously believed, " that Great Britain was 
too honest to have any political connexions with the continent 
of Europe." By anatural progression, or diversit)'' of reading, 
the story now goes, as the British Critic has it — " that the 
Americans debated during three successive days, whether 
they were not the greatest., wisest^ bravest^ most ingenious., and 
most learned of mankind P'' This is the shape in which it will, 
doubtless, be embalmed by the British historians. 

Let us attend now to the facts of the case, as they are ap- 
parent upon the face of the printed debate, and remain noto- 
rious to all who followed the course of our public affairs at 
j'the time. 

The French revolution had divided the American people 
into two great parties; the one disposed for an intimate alli- 
ance with France ; the other averse from any connexion 
with the new republic, and amicably affected to Great Britain. 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

RT I. General Washington, by adopting and maintaining the policy 
of neutrality between the belligerent powers of Europe, and 
by giving his countenance and official sanction to Jay's treaty, 
so called, of 1795, with Great Britain, had rendered himself 
obnoxious to the leaders of that division of our politicians 
who favoured her enemy, and would have renounced her 
trade. Their antagonists in Congress were fortified in their 
dislike and dread of the French republic, and their predilec- 
tion for the most friendly political intercourse and free 
commercial relations with Great Britain, by the ill-judged 
machinations and intemperate language of the French re- 
presentatives in this country, and the open support which 
the French government lent to the most insulting trespasses 
upon our national sovereignty. 

General Washington having announced his resolution to 
retire into private life, an election for a successor to the chief 
magistracy took place in 1796, and gave new animation to the 
feelings and plans just mentioned. At the close of the year, 
while this election was raging^ if I maybe allowed the term, 
Washington delivered his farewell address to the federal 
legislature ; and in the house of representatives a committee 
composed of five members, three of whom were friends of 
his administration, was appointed to prepare an answer to his 
speech. The draught of an answer which this committee re- 
ported, contained the following paragraph. " The spectacle of 
a whole nation, the freest and most enlightened in theworld^ of- 
fering, by its representatives, the tribute of unfeigned appro- 
bation to its first citizen, however novel and interesting it 
may be, derives its lustre fi-om the transcendant merit," &c. 
The phrase which I have put in italics found its way into the 
draught, from the desire of the committee to place Washing- 
ton at the highest elevation possible, in opposition to the de- 
signs of some zealots of party in Congress, who aimed at di- 
minishing the lustre of his personal reputation, and the credit 
of his system of politics. Moreover, France had not long be- 
fore asserted for herself the pre-eminence over all nations in 
freedom and political intelligence; and the authors of the 
draught, with those of the same side in Congress, were eager 
to countervail this, as well as every other overweening preten- 
sion, which might enhance her influence in the United States. 

Mr. Sitgreaves, one of the most distinguished members of 
the anti-gallican party, explained to the house that " the light 
spoken of was political light, and had no reference to arts, 
science, or literature ; that it was intended to make the com- 
pliment stronger to General Washington, and was to be re- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

garded as a matter entirely domestic, and not as a public act ^EC 
for foreign nations." 

The answer at large brought into view the main political 
questions which agitated the country, and expressed an un- 
qualified approval of Washington's official career. A debate 
arose upon the general strain of it, which lasted two days. This 
debate turned chiefly upon the point of " the wisdom and firm- 
ness" of his administration, in reference to England and 
France, and etnbraced the investigation of all our relations 
with the latter power. Objection had been immediately made 
to the phrase which has furnished so much sport to the British 
wits, not only by the opposition, but by several of the most de- 
cided federal members. One of these, Mr. Thatcher, finding 
that it interfered with the principal purpose of obtaining an 
appearance of unanimity in the homage to Washington and his 
course of policy, moved, at length, after it had been discussed 
with some copiousness, though incidentally, that the words 
" spectacle of a whole nation the freest and most enlightened," 
should be amended so as to read " the spectacle of a free and 
enlightened nation," — xvh'ich was carried without a division. 
In the course of the debate, a suggestion was, indeed, made, 
in the way of exception, that the use of the superlative would 
give umbrage to France ; but this consideration must have 
proved the reverse of dissuasive for the majority, in the state 
of their feelings towards that power, with whom they so soon 
aftewards came to open war. They concurred in the amend- 
ment with such readiness, from the two-fold motive of facili- 
tating the adoption of the material parts of the answer, and 
avoiding what might have the air of national arrogance. 

Thus we see that the famed " proposition of congress to de- 
dare America the freest and most enlightened nation on the 
globe," — the " act of congress by which the Americans esta- 
blished that they are the most enlightened people of the world," 
• — was no more than an occasional phrase, hazarded by a com- 
mittee in the draught of a domestic paper, for purposes dis- 
tinct from that of glorifying the nation; which phrase, though 
equally suited to favourite aims of the majority of congress, 
was disavowed and rejected by that majority, chiefly because 
' it savoured of presumption, and seemed to infringe upon strict 
laational decorum. The transaction argues, on the whole, in 
the congress, sentiments opposite to those which it has fur- 
nished the English writers occasion to impute ; and, when we 
advert to the nature of the dispositions towards England, 
which were mingled^with its origin, we must deem their re- 
presentations still more ungracious and illiberal. An instance 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

of the same scrupulousness is certainly not to be found in th* 
annals of the British parliament. I refer to the answers of 
that body to the speeches from the throne, and to the votes 
of thanks as presented by the Speakers — particularly the last, 
Mr. Abbot, — to the public servants whom it has distinguish- 
ed, for self-applause and claims of national superiority, be- 
yond which, no intoxication of pride, or reason of state can 
ever, in the civilized world, carry national pretensions. This 
reference from an American will, perhaps, be thought a very 
deficient measure of recrimination; but it is to be borne in 
mind, that, however transcendant may be the British nation, 
in all respects, in the comparison with her " kinsmen of the 
west," her pre-eminence, in valour and science at least, over 
the nations of Europe, is not so far incontrovertible and no- 
torious, that, while constantlv asserting it herself, she can, 
without inconsistency or assurance, make a standing jest of 
the single example of exaltedness which she charges upon the 
American congress. 

The obnoxious phrase in the draught of the American com*'- 
mittee was, in fact, warrantable in itself, and might have been 
adopted, as it was meant, with perfect propriety. The com- 
mittee had in view civil and religious freedom combined, and 
the diffusiveness of political light, and elementary knowledge ^ 
— points in which I think it hardly possible to contest the su- 
premacy of the United States. For proclaiming this supre- 
macy, there were strong motives derived from the peculiar * 
situation of the country in regard to France, at the juncture. 
The confidence of a part of the American people in their own 
institutions and political wisdom, seemed to be shaken in some 
degree by the pretensions of French democracy, and to stand 
in need of such confirmation as the body of their representa- 
tives could furnish, for their protection against the most mis- 
chievous delusions. 

Although I may appear to have allotted already too much 
space to this topic, I must claim permission to introduce the 
observations which were made by Fisher Ames, in congress, 
on the occasion. They belong, in strictness, to its history. 

Mr. Ames said — " If a man were to call himself more free 
and enlightened than his fellows, it would be considered as 
arrogant self-praise. His very declaration would prove that 
he wanted sense as well as modesty; but a nation might be 
called so by a citizen of that nation, without impropriety, be- 
cause in doing so, he bestows no praiseof superiority on him- 
self ; he may be in fact, sensible that he is less enlightened 
than the wise of other nations. This sort of national eulogiuin 



BRITISH REVIEWS. i 

may, no doubt, be fostered by vanity and grounded in mis- SEC. ^ 
take: it is sometimes just ; it is certainly common, and not* 
always either ridiculous or offensive. It did not say that 
either France or England had not been remarkable for en- 
lightened men ; their literati are more numerous and dis- 
tinguished than our own. 

" The general character with respect to this country, was 
strictly true. Our countrymen, almost universally, possess 
some property and some portion of learning, — two distinc- 
tions so remarkably in their favour as to vindicate the ex- 
pression objected to. But go through France, Germany, and 
most countries of Europe, and it would be found that out of 
fifty millions of people, not more than two or three had any 
pretensions to knowledge, the rest being, comparatively with 
Americans, ignorant. In France, which contains twenty-five 
millions of people, only one was calculated to be in any res- 
pect enlightened, and perhaps under the old system there was 
not a greater proportion possessed of property ; whilst in 
America, out of four millions of people, scarcely any part 
of them could be placed upon the same ground with the 
rabble of Europe. 

" That class called vulgar, canaille, rabble, so numerous 

there, does not exist here as a class, though our towns have 

individuals of it. Look at the Lazzaroni of Naples ; there are 

j 20,000 or more houseless people, wretched and in want ! He 

' asked whether where men wanted every thing, and were in 

the proportion of twenty-nine to one, it was possible that they 

could be trusted with power ? Wanting wisdom and morals, 

how could they use it? It was therefore that the iron hand of 

despotism was called in by the few who had any thing, to 

preserve any kind of control over the many. This evil, as 

I it truly was, rendered real liberty hopeless. 

" In America, out of four millions of people, the proportion 
of those who cannot read and write, and who, having nothing, 
are interested in plunder and confusion, and disposed for both, 
is exceedingly small. In the southern states he knew there 
were people well informed; he disclaimed all design of invidi- 
ous comparison ; the members from the south would be more 
capable of doing justice to their constituents ; but, in the east- 
. em states, he was more particularly conversant, and knew the 
\ people in them could universally read and write, and were 
I well informed as to public affairs. In such a country, liberty 
I is likely to be permanent. It is possible to plant it in such a 
I soil, and reasonable to hope, that it will take root and flouri,sh 
I Vol. I.— P p 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 

long, as we see it does. But can liberty, such as we unde^-- 
stand and enjoy, exist in societies where the fe-u) only havjB 
property, and the many are both ignorant and licentious ? \ 

" Was there any impropriety, then, in saying what was a 
fact? As it regards government, the declai-ation is useful. It 
is respectful to the people to speak of them with the justice 
due to them, as eminently formed for liberty and worthy of 
it. If they are free and enlightened, let us say so. Congress 
ought not only to say this because it was true, but because 
their saying so would have the effect to produce that self-re- 
spect which was the best guard of liberty ; and most condu- 
cive to the happiness of society". It was useful to show where 
our hopes and the true safety of our freedom are reposed. It 
procured in return from the citizens ajust confidence ; it che- 
rished a spirit of patriotism unmixed with foreign alloy, and 
the courage to defend a constitution which a people really 
enlightened knows to be worthy of its efforts." 

The American Congress has had its full share of maternal 
abuse. It has been visited with the wrath and the pleasantry 
of the British writers, on other grounds than the one of which 
I have just treated. With the Fullers and the Lord Coch- 
ranes before their eyes, with the Wilkes' and the Gordons ■ 
fresh in their recollection, they have yet been bold enough to i 
single, for the purpose of general detraction, out of our legis- ■ 
lative annals, instances of disorderly deportment in indivi- j 
duals. That of Mathew Lyon and Roger Griswold, the only ' 
^agrant case, is vamped up in all the reviews and books of tra- 
vels, as if personal violence were a new species of irregularity , 
in the history of legislative assemblies ; and as if the British 
particularly furnished no case of the kind for admonishment. 
But we have onl)'^ to open the parliamentary annals, to find 
precedents of an early date, which might have sufficed for 
all purposes. Take, for example, the rencontre narrated in 
the following extract from the history of the House of Com- 
mons of the year 1678, in the reign of Charles II. 

**• Debate on Sir J. Trelawney's calling Mr. Ash a rascal." 
Sir J. TrelaM-ney said — " I rise up the earlier to speak, be- 
cause I wish this had been in another place : but perhaps in a 
more sacred place than this^^'ii any man should call me rascal, 

* The Quarterly Review is (maugre the example of Sir J. TreJawney) 
greatly scandalized at the story related by Birbeck, of a citizen of the state 
of Indiana having declared before a spiritual tribunal, that he should not 
wish to live longer than he had the right to knock down the man who 
told him he lied. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 2\ 

I should call him rebel, and giv^ him a box on the ear. SEC. V 
The cause of the quarrel that happened was this. Colonel v^''>^ 
Birch was saying — lose this question, and he would vote for 
a general toleration. No, said I, I never was for that. And 
Ash said — I am not for popery: — said I — nor I for presby- 
tery. I came to Ash and told him he must explain his words. 
Said Ash, I am no more a presbyterian than you are a papist. 
Upon which I said. Ash was a rascal, and I struck him, and 
I should have done it any where." 

Sir Wm. Harbord said — "Sir John Trelawney has behaved 
himself like a man of honour?'' Sir John was only slightly 
reprimanded by the Speaker. 

The nature of this proceeding and the general spirit which 
gave rise to it, and made the punishment so light, is as little 
creditable, as the affair of Mathew Lyon, who was, be it re- 
membered, spurned by the whole American Congress. And 
it is quite as fair in me to go back to the case of Trelawney, 
as it is in an English writer to recur to that of Lyon. Our 
party-heats at the period Avhen this happened, were also ex- 
treme, although not indeed fed by religious bigotry. 

If, however, a recent case is wanted, it can be furnished 
without difficulty. It is from the applauded Travels of Simon, 
4n*England, of 1809, that I extract the following history : 

" The House of Commons has exhibited lately a very cu- 
rious tragi-comic scene. An honourable member, a country 
gentleman, and, I believe, a county member, took offence at 
some slight he had experienced during the late examination 
in Parliament ; and having made some intemperate remarks, 
supported by oaths, there was a motion, that the words of the 
honourable member shovdd be taken down. This produced 
another explosion from the honourable member, who was or- 
dered by the Speaker to leave the House, which he obeyed 
with some difficulty. The House then decided that he should 
be put into the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. This reso- 
lution was no sooner announced to him, than he burst in 
again, furiously calling to the Speaker that he had no right to 
send him into confinement ; and that the little fellow in the 
^ great rvig was the servant^ and not the master of the House of 
^Commons. The Speaker, in consequence of the vote of im- 
prisonment, was obliged to order the sergeant-at-arms to do 
his duty ; and the latter, with the assistance of some other 
officers, succeeded in carrying off his prisoner after an obsti- 
nate combat^ — the honourable member being an Hercules ! 
j What would the Parisians say to an affair like this in their 



HOSTILiriKS OF THE 

I. Senat Conservatrf^ and one of the members in grand costume, 
*»^ giving battle to the door keeper on the senatorial floor ?''"'* 

Lyon, the aggressor in the affair of the American House of 
Representatives, was not an American, and it is probable that 
those who sent him to the American legislature were chiefly 
foreigners. The right of suffrage in the United States is sub- 
ject to few restrictions ; it is acquired, after a few years' resi- 
dence, without much difficulty, by Europeans of every order. 
It would not, therefore, be matter of surprise, if men of vulgar 
manners and unruly spirit — strangers, with the slovigh of their 
native grossness and virulence, were occasionally found in our 
Congress. Besides, the American representatives belong to 
professions, and circles ofsociet}', in which the more elaborate 
and delicate courtesies cannot be supposed to be practised, nor 
self-control to be acquired, in the same extent as in what is 
called the fashionable and polished company of the British 
islands, where the legislators are boastfully said to be trained 
to habitual politeness, under a discipline suited to their here- 
ditary gentility and affluence. Yet, it has so happened, that in- 
stances of members, such as I have described above, are rare iu 
the annals of Congress; and that as much decorumhas prevailed 
in that body at all times, as in any similar institute of modern 
days. Since the era of our federal assemblies, the British Par- 
liament has exhibited more scenes of turbulence and inde- 
cency ; a strain of personal reflection has been immemorially 
indulged in it, which would not be borne in the former. Mr. 
Canning complains, in one of his late speeches, of " i\\e prac- 
tice in the House of Commons, of calumniating public men , 
on either side of the House, by imputing to them motives of I 
action, the insinuation of which would not be tolerated in the 
intercourse of private life." This gentleman allowed him- 
self, on the floor, to stigmatize Mr. Lambton, one of the most 
distinguished orators of the opposition, as " a dolt and an < 
idiot." In Feb. 181 T, Mr. Bennet exclaimed, in his place, ,; 
against " such ministers as the noble lord, Castlereagh, who yt 
had already imbrued their hands in the blood of their coub- i 
try, V and been guilty of the most criminal cruelties." Lord Ij 
Castlereagh replied by giving the lie directto his accuser. Up- ^ 
on another occasion in the same year, when vilified by Mr. j 
Brougham, the noble lord described the speech of the honour- j 
able and learned gentleman as " a strain of black, malignant, j 
and libellous insinuation." In reading the invectives of Mr. | 
Tierney, and the bitter taunts of Mr. Canning, we feel a two- ! 
■ < 

* Vol. I. p. 63, 



BRITISH REVIRWS. 

fold wonder — at the licentiousness of the parliamentary SEC 
tongue, and at the impunity with which such cruel insults 
are offered on so conspicuous a theatre.* 

The general style of altercation in both houses of Parlia- 
ment during the American war, and at some periods of the 
administration of the younger Pitt, has never, I am sure, 
been equalled in the American congress in any stage of our 
party irritations. If I open the volumes of parliamentary de- 
bates, I fall at once upon such specimens of senatorial tem- 
perance as the following : 

" Lord Mansfield rose in great passion, — he charged the 
last noble lord, (Earl of Shelburne,) with uttering gross 
falsehoods." — Abnond''s Parliamentari/ Debates^ Feb. 7th^ 
1775. 

" The Earl of Shelburne returned the charge of falsehood 
to Lord Mansfield in direct terms." — 3?c/. 

" The Duke of Richmond animadverted in very severe 
terms, on an expression which fell in the heat of debate from 
a noble lord (Lord Lyttleton.) He said no man could impute 
littleness, lowness, or cunning to any member of that assembly 
(alluding to what his lordship had pointed at Lord Camden) 
for delivering his sentiments freely, unless he drew the pic- 
ture from something he felt within himself, as by illiberally 
charging others with low and sinister designs, the charge 
could only properly be applied to the person from whom it 
originated." — Ibid. 



* The following, of so late a date as June 7th, 1819, is a fair specimen. 
"-Mr. Canning' said: The shuffing, cowardly, and evasive course recomtnend- 
ed by the right honourable gentleman, Mr. Tievacy, showed what was his 
real object, &.c. 
*' " Mr. Calcraft here rose to order. He could not listen in silence to the 
"foul, offensive, and almost unparliamentary aspersions which the right honour- 
able gentleman had passed on his i-ight honourable friend, on himself, and 
^ on all his friends around him, &c. 

" Mr. Canning here interrupted the honourable gentleman. He thouglit 
that in debate there was tolerably fair room to give and to take ,- and when- 
! } ever the terms 'indecent' and 'atrocious,' wliich had been applied to the 
, proposal of ministers were retracted, then, and not till then, should he re- 
tract the epithets which he had applied to the conduct of the gentleman 
opposite. 

" Mr. Calcraft rejoined. Cowardly, evasive, and shuffling ! from a man 

: _ too, who when he looked on one side on the honourable friends whom he 

i had betrayed, and at the other side on the honourable friends vhom lie had 

lampooned, but with both of whom he was now united in place, might re- 

■ fleet, perhaps, on a more exact illustration of such qualities. (Hear, hear, 

. hear.") 



HOSTILITIES OF TflE 

Mr. Edmund Burke said : — 

" Sir, die noble lord who spoke last (Lord North) after 
extending his right leg a full yard before his left, rolling his 
flaming eyes, and moving his ponderous frame, has at length 
opened his mouth. I was all attention. After these portents, 
I expected something still more awful and tremendous : I ex- 
pected that the Tower would have been threatened in articu- 
lated thunder ; but I have heard only a feeble remonstrance 
against violence and passion : when I expected the powers of 
destruction to cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war, an over- 
blown bladder has burst, and nobody has been hurt by the 
crack." — Cobbetfs Debates^ 1770. 

In one particular form of indecorum, I might almost call 
it enormity, the British Parliament has gone far beyond what 
is known to our experience in America. I refer to the jocu- 
larity indulged on occasions the most pathetic in the facts, 
or the most solemn in the consequences for the interests and 
honour of the nation. 

During the debates on the slave trade in the years 1791 
and 1792, when disclosures were made of crimes commit- 
ted by British captains in that trade, so dreadfully atro- 
cious, that even now they wring the heart, and overpower the 
imagination of a cursory reader, laughter resounded from 
time to time in the House of Commons ; and that body listen'^ 
ed complacently to a speech from Lord Carhampton, to which 
nothing can be compared, considering the occasion and sub- 
ject, except, perhaps, the show of dancing-dogs, under the 
guillotine at Paris, so eloquently stigmatized by Burke. I 
will take, from the debate of 1791, a more particular exam- 
ple of this almost incredible levity which has distinguished 
the British Parliament. 

" Mr. William Smith related the following anecdote upon the authority of 
^ye witnesses. ' A child of about ten months old took sick on board of 
a British slave-ship, and would not eat. The captain took up the child, and 
flotjged him with a cat ; 'D — n you,' said he, 'I'll make you eat, or I'll kill 
you.' From this, and other ill treatment, the child's legs swelled, and the 
captain ordered some water to be made hot for abating the swelling. But 
even his tender mercies were cruel; fop the cook putting his hand into the 
water, said it was too hot. 'D — n him,' said the captain, ' put his feet in.' 
The child was put into the water, and the nails and skin came all ofl'his feet. 
Oiled cloths were then put round them. The child was then tied to a heavy 
log, and two or three days afterwards the captain caught it up again and 
said, 'I will make you eat, or I will be the death of you.' He immediately 
flogged the child again; and in a quai'ter of an hour, it died.' One would 
imagine, that the most savage cruelty woidd here have been satiated ; but, 
extraordinary as it might appear, of this detestable transaction, the most de- 
testable part yet remained. After the infant was dead, he would not suffer 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

any of the people on deck to throw the body over, but called the wretched SEC 
mother, to perform this last sad office to her murdered child. Unwilling as 
it mig'lit naturally be supposed she was to comply, he beat her till he made 
her take up the child and carry it to the side of the vessel, and then she 
dropped it into the sea, turning- her head the other w:iy, that she might not 
see it !" Mr. Smith asked the committee of the House if ever they had heard 
of such a deed, 07i -ivhich some of the inconsiderate laughed, and on hearing it, 
he declared with great Indignation, that he should not have thought it pos- 
sible for any one man in that committee to have betrayed such a total want 
of feeling, and that he was almost ashamed of being a member of the assembly, iii 
lohich so disgraceftd a circumstance had happened." 

We were told by Sir S. Romilly, (March 11th, 1818,) that, 
" in the violence of party, cruelties which could not be heard 
without shuddering, had been treated in a British House of 
Commons with such levity, that it had been facetiously said, 
that the outcry which had been raised, was onlyyir a CathO' 
lie's having got a sore hack.'''' 

,1 When the question of abolishing the use of climbing-boys 
fti the sweeping of chimneys {ihe zvhiie ?iegro slaves ofEiigland^ 
as they are called by the Quarterly Review) was brought be- 
fore the House of Lords in the present year, (1819,) accom- 
panied with harrowing details of cruelty and suffering, lord 
Lauderdale, who opposed the bill for their relief, got into 
ia facetious mood, and put his brother peers in the same, by 
the following, among other appropriate and refined anecdotes : 
" In some parts of Ireland," the noble lord said, " it had been 
the practice, instead of employing climbing-boys, to tie a rope 
round the neck of a goose, and thus drag the bird up a chim- 
ney, which was cleaned by the fluttering of its wings. This 
practice so much interested the feelings of many persons, that, 
for the sake of protecting the goose, they were ready to give 
up all humanity towards other animals. A man in a country 
village, having one day, according to the old custom, availed 
himself of the aid of a goose, was accused by his neighbours 
of inhumanity. In answer to the remonstrance of his accuser, 
he observed that he must have his chimney swept. Yes, re- 
plied the humane friend of the goose, to be sure you must 
sweep your chimney, but you cruel ha'ist you, why dont you 
take two ducks, they will do the job as well." {^Laughing.l 

Whoever was present in the gallery of the House of Com- 
mons, during the examination of Mrs. Clarke, in the affair 
of the Duke of York, can well remember the sportfulness 
of the House, exercised in loose allusions, and pushed, from 
time to time, to clamorous merriment. We have witnessed 
no such edifying spectacle, whether as to the cause or the 
effect, in the American Congress. Before I finish with this 



4 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

^'^T I- topic, I will offer one case more of parliamentary insensi- 
'''"^^**^ bility, which, together with what I have already produced, 
may soften the horror of the Quarterly Review at the occur- 
rence of" one member's striking at another" in the American 
Congress. I quote from the proceedings of the House of Com- 
mons for April 7th, 1819: — 

Mr. Bennet said — 

" That from the year 1781 to the year 1818, two thousand nine hun- 
dred and eighty-seven women convicts, being in the proportion of one- 
seventh of tlie men transported during the same period, had been sent out 
of the country. Of two hundred and twenty women sent from the yeai* 
1816 to 1818, one hundred and twent)'-one were sentenced to the Hmited 
term of seven years transportation. Few of these women ever returned. 
Their only means of returning was prostitution. Many of the convicts had 
received judgment for capital offences, and many for minor ones. Now the 
act of the 9th of the King, chap. 74, had been drawn up on the principle, 
that persons convicted of minor ofl^ences ought to be confined to peniten- 
tiaries, and not sent at a gi'eat expense to a distant settlement. A learned 
and distinguished judge had told him, that on the last circuit he was about 
to sentence a woman to be transported, when his resolution was changed by 
the clerk of the peace informing him that it was nearly impossible for wo- 
men to return. No classification e.visted on board, but petty offenders were 
compelled to herd and associate with capital convicts and hardened delin- 
quents. This appeared to him in the light of a gratuitous infliction of pain, 
which was unworthy of, and discreditable to, a great country. He must 
complain also of the manner in which women were brought from country 
gaols to one spot, for the purpose of being put on board the vessels des- 
tined for New South Wales. One unfortunate girl had been brought from 
Cambridge, so bound in chains that it was necessary to saw them asunder; 
and another girl from Carlisle, sent up in the same way, on the top of a 
coach, had had her child torn from her breast ! When she was brought to 
Newgate, she was in the utmost state of torture. When once on board, no 
distinction was observed between the small and the great offender ; tlie 
girl whose passion for finery had prompted her to commit a petty theft, 
was placed in the same bed with the shameless prostitute who robbed on 
system. He held in his hand a letter written by Mr. Marsden, Chaplain- 
general in New South Wales, and stating that promiscuous intercourse be- 
tween the seamen and female convicts had prevailed on board a ship which 
had cairiedout a great number of women previously trained under the care 
of Mrs. Fry and others, to habits of morality and decorum. 

" Whether the new system of this year, with respect to the i-egulations 
on board female convict ships, would be better than that of last year, he 
should not inquire ; but he objected to a system under which, when the wo- 
men arrived at New South Wales, they had no place where they could lay 
their heads." 

Mr. Wilberforce said — " that in the present state of the colony, every 
fresh addition to the number transported, while there was no increase of 
accommodation, must add to the misery and vice of those who were at 
present there, besides plunging the new comers into the same wretched 
state." 

" Mr. F. Buxton conceived that the case of the unfortunate female con- 
victs deserved particular consideration. It already appeared that out of' 
one hundred and sixty women employed in one manufactory, there were 
one hundi'ed and twenty turned out every night, and obliged to depend, 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 

not to s:jy for comforts, but for necessaries, upon the casual wages of pros- SEC 
titution." 

Mr. Bathurst (one of the ministry) said — " that before he examined tlie 
speech of the honourable mover, he should allude to the argument of his ho- 
nourable friend (Mr. Wilberforce,) who had argued that no female con- 
victs should be sent off until the report of the committee was made, and he 
supposed, till some regulation was founded upon it. Now, if this argument 
were followed out consistently, it would go much beyond the present mo- 
tion, as it would apply not to one vessel, but to all convicts, male or female. 
But then it was argued by the honourable mover, that it was difficult to keep 
men, but that femides might be kept with great convenience, 8tc." {A laugh.^ 



Vol. I.— Q q 



306 



SECTION IX. 



OF THE EXISTENCE OF NEGKO SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES, 
AND OF THE BRITISH ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE. 

RT I. * 1. I HAVE reserved for the concluding section of this first 
part of my Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain, the 
topic of our negro slavery, the side on which we appear most 
vulnerable, and against which the reviewers have directed 
their fiercest attacks. With respect to their reproaches on 
all other grounds, enough, I think, has been adduced to show 
bow strangely they have overlooked the lesson of the gospel 
— he that is without sin let him first cast the stone. They 
have aggravated the offence of malevolence by extreme folly, , 
in selecting heads of accusation which may be retorted with . 
complete success. This is as much the case in relation to i 
the existence of domestic slavery among us, as in any other ■ 
instance, and I shall not hesitate to avail myself on this oc- 
casion, as heretofore, of an error in reasoning, which springs 5 
as well from a corruption of political morals, as from aai 
4 eclipse of the understanding. Of all Europeans, an English 
' man is the one, who should have most cautiously abstained f 
from venting reproaches, that brought Africa and the slave 
trade into view : If there is any nation upon which pru- 
dence and shame enjoined silence in regard to the negro 
bondage of these States, England is that nation ; but it hap- 
pens precisely as in all the other questions open to the most 
direct recrimination, that it is from her the loudest outcrie^ 
and the sharpest upbraidings have come. 

We experienced this particular injustice, even during our 
colonial dependence, while she was actively supplying us 
with slaves, and endeavouring by the most jealous precau- 
tions, to secure this favourite branch of her monopoly. Her 
writers drew invidious comparisons between the situation 
and prospects of the mother country and those of the con- 
tinental colonies, founded upon the presence in the latter, 
of the multitude of blacks v*^hose number and miseries she 






NEGRO SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE. < 

was daily and forcibly aug-menting. When her merchants SECT 
and travellers returned from this reprobate land, they insti-' 
tilted similar contrasts; stigmatized the colonial slave-holders; 
and could not pardon the atrocity of retaining in bondage even 
the white convicts whom she had thrust into their hands. They 
spread, concerning the habitual state of the latter, as well as 
of the slaves, tales of horror, of the nature of which we may 
form some idea from the following passage, dated 1720, of 
the preface to Beverley's History of Virginia. " It hath been 
so represented to the common people of England as to make 
them believe, that the servants in Virginia are made to draw 
in cart and plow as the oxen do in England, and that the coun- 
try turns all people black who go to live there; Avith other such 
prodigious phantasms." The worthy and intelligent histo- 
rian, whose life had been spent in that colony, under circum- 
stances the most favourable to extensive and accurate obser- 
tion, bore a very different testimony, which may serve 
equally well for the present day — " I can assure with great 
'truth that generally the slaves in Virginia, are not worked 
jiear so hard, nor so many hours in a day, as the husbandmen 
and day labourers in England ; that no people more abhor the 
thoughts of cruel usage to servants than the Virginians."* 

Since our independence, slave-holding has seemed to be 
fairly let loose to the Briton for the purposes of self-congratu- 
lation, and of the execration of American existence ; as if, in- 
deed, England retained no longer a connexion with the West 
Indies ; frequented no more the coast of Africa ; and had ac- 
tually *' in the midst of her rottenness, torn off the manacles 
of slaves all over the Avorld." The negro has invariably 
figured in the reports of the writers of that nation who have 
condescended to'visit this country, as a "goblin damn'd;" 
he is the chief bugbear which Lord Sheffield set up, in 1784, 
to deter Irishmen from exchanging the blessings of their do- 
mestic condition, for the miseries of the American ; which 
Fearon was instructed to put forward to correct that "most 
mischievous evil," the emigration of English artisans ; and 
which Birbeck has employed to draw into his own neigh- 
bourhood in the Illinois, such of his countrymen as persist 
in seeking these shores, in spite of Lord Castlereagh, and ot 
the effigies of that evil " which counterbalances all the ex- 
cisemen, licensers, and tax-gatherers of England." 

The Edinburgh Review having, in the 60th number, in the 
article on Birbeck's Travels, presented views tending to en- 

* Book IV, c. X. 



$ NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

RT T. courage this disposition to emigrate, would seem to have dis- 
covered that it had gone too far, and suddenly resolved to 
counteract the effects of its first representations. This is the 
natural explanation of the patriotic mood in which we find it 
in the 61st number, where every thing in Britain is repre- 
sented as inspiring confidence, and inviting contentment ; 
while all in America is made to wear a sinister and repulsive 
aspect. The zeal of a proselyte is proverbially ardent. Hav- 
ing, in a rapid evolution, set itself against emigration, this 
journal could, of course, " keep no measures" with negro 
slavery in America. Here was the yawning gulph of crime 
and perdition, at which an Englishman should pause, as he 
was blindly rushing onward from the tax-gatherer, and the 
"menacing hydra (pauperism) that stalked over his native 
land." Better remain where he was, safe from the demoraliz- 
ing- effects of commanding slaves, and with the consolation 
at home, that he had " an inestimable parliament ;" that " the 
next twenty years might bring a great deal of internal im- 
provement ;" that " the apprentice laws had been swept 
away," and "the strong fortress of bigotry rudely assailed." 
Care was taken at the same time not to inform him how large 
a portion of our vast country, is wholly without the institution 
of slavery ; how small a part of our white population is in- 
debted to the labour of slaves ; — that considerably more than 
a moiety of our whole population, inhabiting distinct portions 
of territory, is altogether free from the reproach and the de- 
triment of commanding slaves, while a great probability ob- 
tains that within " the next twenty years," no inconsiderable 
part of the remainder will enjoy the same exemption. 

Nor were these considerations, or the facts which I propose 
presently to adduce, allowed to interfere with the design of a 
sweeping ban against the American people, which should put 
every Englishman in a better humour with the " rottenness" 
of England, by exhibiting her in contradistinction, as the tute* 
lary genius of freedom, and the country after which he han- 
kered, as marked with fouler stains, and doubly gangrened 
to the very core. I have already quoted literally, the passage 
of the Review, which composes the grand arraignment, and 
will now repeat the several weighty allegations into which it 
is resolvable. They are as follows: — The institution of slavery 
is the foulest blot in the national character of America ; it§ 
existence in her bosom is an atrocious crime — the consumma- 
tion of wickedness, and admits of no sort of apology from 
her situation ; — the American, generally, is a scourger and 
vmrderer of slaves, and therefore below the least and lowest of 



SLAVE TRADE. 

the European nations in the scale of wisdom and virtue ; and, SECT 
above all, he sinks, on this account, immeasurably, in the com- 
parison with England, who, become the agent of universal 
emancipation, may challenge the world to decide which of 
the two people is the most liable to censure, upon a general 
consideration of their demerits. These propositions imply, 
and iiiay be converted into, others of this purport — that Ame- 
rica is chiefly to blame for the establishment and continuance 
of her negro slavery ; that she could have suppressed it either 
before or since her independence, even with safety and ease ; 
that it is a system of flagellation and murder, with which she 
is universally chargeable ; that her congress has remained in- 
diflferent to its enormities ; that on her own part it is incom- 
patible with soundness of heart or understanding, and with 
the love or the possession of political freedom ; that no nation 
of Europe, not the lowest and least, presents a similar or 
equally revolting spectacle of servitude ; that England exhi- 
bits, within the pale of her power, a clear and glorious sun- 
shine of personal liberty and security ; that she is in no wise 
implicated in the guilt of the American ; that her dispositions 
have always been benign, and her hands pure, in relation to 
the unhappy race, whom we conspire to oppress and extermi- 
nate ; or, at least, that if she has not always been busy in 
*' tearing off their manacles," and assuaging their sorrows, if 
she has ever been taxable with a part of their Avrongs, and 
stained with Vifexv drops of their blood, she has, by her subse- 
quent temper and conduct, purged away the taint, and made 
ample amends to them, and to the cause of justice and freedom. 
America and Britain are here put at direct issue, on 
points which vitally affect national character ; the American 
is cited, officiously and triumphantly, before the world, bv a 
British literary tribunal on the Areopagus of Edinburgh, to 
measure himself upon them with the Briton. For the sake 
of historical truth, as well as for our own honoui-, and the re- 
pulse of arrogant and invasive pretensions, we are bound to 
appear, and answer in the best way we can, toAvards our vin- 
dication, and the confusion of the aggressor. There is no 
keenness or latitude of retaliation which will appear exces- 
sive after such provocation; and indulgence will be readily 
granted, for the same reason, should details of fact be re- 
produced, either familiar to most readers, or harrowing for 
the feelings of humanit3% 

2. I am not sorry to have an opportunity, at length, of 
|»leading the apology of the early American colonists, on a 



) NEGRO Slavery and 

RT I. score left untouched in the pages which I have devoted to 
them in particular. What then is the first general fact which 
offers itself in the question ? It is this — that England, who 
had been actively, eagerly, engaged in the slave trade since 
the year 1562, herself supplied her North American colonists, 
from the outset, with negroes whom she sought, and seized, 
and manacled on the coast of Africa, and dragged and sold 
into this continent. The institution of negro slavery, " the 
great curse of America," lies, indisputably, at her door. 
What was her motive ? The alleviation of the lot of her 
sons whom she had driven into the distant wilderness ? No 
British writer has counted so far upon the simplicity of man- 
kind as to hazard this explanation. The motive was sheer 
love of gain ; omniverous avarice ; looking not merely to the 
immediate profit upon the cargo of human flesh, but to the 
greater and permanent productiveness of the settlements 
whose staples were to be monopolized by the mother country. 
Let it be conceded, that the colonists received the auxilia- 
ries thus brought to their hands, and whom they durst not 
reject, without repugnance, perhaps with avidity. But, con- 
sidering the nature of their respective motives and situation, 
does the guilt of the receiver in this case bear any propor- 
tion to that of the trader ? Can the seduced be brought 
down, by any principle of reasoning, to the level of the se- 
ducer ? If the colonists, the southern particularly, in a new 
climate noxious to the white labourer, but favourable to the 
African constitution ; exposed to much physical suffering 
from other causes, and to so many additional influences de- 
pressing for the mind ; liable to be called off from the cul- 
ture of the soil by the irruptions of the savage native ; — 
yielded to the temptation so immediate, of being relieved 
from the wasting labours of the field, and enabled to provide 
more effectually for their defence against the Indian ; — if \ve 
suppose them even to have gone in quest of the negro slave, 
in a few instances, after the mother country had set them the 
example, and given them a taste of the relief which he could 
afford, — are they not to be considered quite as excusable as 
we can conceive men to be by any possibility, in any instance 
of the adoption of domestic servitude, or, indeed, of the 
commission of any wrong ? 

It is a contested point whether the constitution even of the 
native white is equal to the task of cultivating the earth suc- 
cessfully in our southern states, in the actual condition of its 
surface ; but, in the first century of settlement, when the forest 
was still to be felled, and the climate, more noxious in itself, 



SLAVE TRADE. 

exercised a more fatal influence, the service of the negro was SECT 
more important, and would naturally be thought indispensa- 
ble by the colonists. 

This plea, too, may be urged for them, that, in common 
with some of the wisest men of the age, numbers believed 
slavery to be strictlj'- lawful in itself, both according to natu- 
ral and revealed religion. The same plea has, indeed, been 
advanced in favour of the slave-dealing nation ; but, though 
we cannot suppose the conscience of the colonist, with the 
bible in his hands, to have remained at rest upon the mere 
purchase and appropriation, at his door, of the negro, with 
the mode of whose acquisition, in Africa, he was unacquaint- 
ed, it is impossible to imagine so entire a perversion and tor- 
por of human reason and feeling, as is implied by the supposi- 
tion that the former, while exciting intestine wars in Africa, 
trepanning the unwary, tearing the native from the centre of 
the dearest ties, exercising, in short, the most nefarious arts, 
and fell ci-uelties, to secure the African victim, could remain 
insensible to the criminality of the pursuit. Another bond- 
age, the guilt of which none have had the hardihood to palm 
upon the colonists, I mean that of men of their own colour 
and nation, objects, for the most part, of the injustice and 
vengeance of faction and bigotry in the mother country, 
tended to reconcile them the more to the subjection of the ne- 
gro whom she taught them, at the same time, to regard as of 
an inferior species. In every way did she familiarize and 
train them to that institution which she now charges upon 
their descendants as " the consummation of wickedness." 

3. It has been shown, in my second section, that the colo- 
nists became dissatisfied, at an early period, with the intro- 
duction of the British convicts among them, and endeavoured, 
though ineffectvially,both by remonstrance and edicts, to arrest 
the practice. They conceived, also, before the expiration of 
the seventeenth century, both disgust and apprehension at the 
importation of the negro slaves, and took, with no better suc- 
cess, similar measures for its repression. Some few of the 
merchants of the northern colonies had embarked in the trade, 
and a comparatively small number of the victims was held in 
servitude there ; but only a very short time elapsed, before 
scruples arose among the conscientious puritans and quakers, 
and the whole system fell into disrepute and reprobation. 
Clarkson has not been able to show for Great Britain, its 
chief patron and agent, so early and pointed an expression of 
just views and feelings on the subject, from any quarter, as is- 



NEGRO SL.WERY AND 

found in the following facts, which I adduce upon the autho- 
rity of public records, and in the language of Dr. Belknap, 
the historian of New Hampshire : 

" In 1645, the General Court of Massachusetts, which then 
exercised jurisdiction over the settlements at Pascataqua, 
* thought proper to write to Mr. Williams, residing there, 
understanding that the neg-rces which a Captain Smyth had 
brought, were fraudulently and injuriously taken and brough^ 
from Guinea, by Captain Smyth's confession, and the rest of 
the company — that he forthwith send the negro, which he ha(f 
of Captain Smyth, hither ; that he may be sent home ; which 
the court do resoh-e to send back without delay. And if you, 
haye any thing to allege, vrhv you should not return him, to be 
disposed of by the court, it will be expected you should 
forthwith make it appear, either by yourself or your agent.' 'v 

About the same time, yiz. 1645, a law was made, "pro- 
hibiting the buying and selling of slaves, except those taken 
in lawful war, or reduced to servitude for their crimes, by a^ 
judicial sentence ; and these were to have the same privileges' 
as were allowed by the law of Moses." 

"■' Among the laws for punishing capital crimes, enacted in,. 
1649, is the following — ' 10. If any man stealeth a man or' 
mankind, he shall be surely put to death. Exodus, xxi. 16.' "*^ 

In 1703, the legislature of Massachusetts imposed a heavy 
dvity on every negro imported, for the payment of which both' 
the vessel and master were ansv/erable. In 1767, they made a# 
more direct attempt to effect the object of that impost. A* 
bill was brought into the House of Representatives "to pre- 
vent t/ie unnatural and nmvarrantablc custom of erislaving man- 
kind^ and the importation of slaves into the province." In its 
progress it was changed, in consequence of the utter improba- ■ 
bility of the success of one of that scope, with the royal go-^ 
vernor, into " an act for laying an impost on negroes imported.'*" 
Even this was sometamorphosed and mutilated by the council, 
that the house refused to proceed in the business. It must 
have failed with the governor, had it passed both assemblies, 
and in whatever shape, as all the royal governors had it in ex- 
press command from the British cabinet to reject all laws of 
that description. The original instructions, afterwards pub- 
lished, of the date of June 30th, 1761, toBenning J. Wentworth, 
Esquire, governor of NcAV Hampshire, contained this clause — 



* See the 4th vol. aiassachusetts' Hjstor. Coll. for Dr. Belknap's accoiiU 
of Slavery in that province. 



SLAVE TRADE. 

" Yjou are not to give your assent to, or pass any law, impos- SECT 
ing duties on negroes imported into New Hampshire."* 

The legislature of Massachusetts persisted, in defiance of 
the known policy of the British rulers ; and in January, 1774, 
framed a bill, entitled " An act to prevent the importation of 
negroes, and others, as slaves into this province." It passed 
through all the forms in both houses, and was laid before 
governor Hutchinson, for his sanction. On the next day, 
the assembly received a harsh answer, and notice of pro- 
rogation. The negroes of the province had deputed a com- 
mittee respectfully to solicit the governor's consent; he told 
them that his instructions forbade it. His successor. General 
Gage, when solicited in the same way, gave the same answer. 
The courts of justice in Massachusetts went farther than 
the legislature. Several blacks sued their masters for their 
freedom, and for wages for past service, upon the grounds, 
that the royal charter expressly declared all persons born or 

i residing in the province to be as free as the king's subjects 
residing in Great Britain ; that by the laws of England no 
man could be deprived of his liberty, but by the judgment of 
his peers ; that the laws of the province relating to an exist- 
ing evil, and attempting to mitigate or regulate it, did not 
authorize it ; that though the slavery of the parents should be 
admitted to be legal, yet no disability of the kind could de- 
scend to children. The first trial took place in 1770, and ter- 
minated in favour of the negroes. Other suits were instituted 
between that period and the revolution, and the juries invaria- 
bly gave their verdict for the plaintiffs. The case of the 
negro Somerset has been the subject of unceasing boast and 
compliment for England. Yet, if we consider the circum- 
stances on both sides, it must appear less creditable than the 
judgment of the Massachusetts court in 1 770. The latter 
preceded the British decision by two years ; it was given upon 
equally broad principles, in the midst of a long established 
practice of negro slavery ; and in defiance of the system of 
the British colonial administration. We are told by Clarkson, 
that, in 1 768, an African slave prosecuted, in England, a per- 
son of the name of Newton, for kidnapping his wife, and 
sending her to the West Indies ; and obtained no more, upon 
the conviction of the defendant, than one shilling damages^ 
and an order for the restitution of the woman within six 
months ; that, Avith respect to the doctrine of the immediate, 
disenthralmentof the African slave on his arrival in England 
I , ' II - 

* See Gordon, Hist, of .^m. Rev. vol. v. letter 2. 

• Vol. I.—R r " 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

Judge Blackstone discountenanced it when his opinion was 
sought by Granville Sharp ; that no satisfactory answer could 
be obtained from the lawyers to whoiti this philanthropist 
applied ; that Lord Mansfield wavered, or rather inclined to 
the adverse sentiment; and that, until the trial of the Somer- 
set case, the great question had been studiously avoided. 

Legislative proceedings in relation to the exclusion of slaves, 
similar to those of Massachusetts, are recorded in the annals 
of the other New England provinces. Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey trod in their footsteps, and early displayed a strong 
desire, arising from the same considerations, to plant an 
effectual barrier against the evil of continued importation; but 
their enactments were regularly overruled in England.* 

The condition of the slaves, in all the provinces north of 
the Susquehannah, was more exempt fi-om hardship and ab- 
jection than negro slavery had ever been known to be else- 
where. In New England particularly, their lot was fa» 
from being severe. They were often bought by conscien- 
tious persons, for the purpose of being well instructed in the 
Christian religion. They had, universally, the enjoyment of 
the Sabbath as a day of rest or of devotion. No greater toil 
was exacted from them than from the white labourers, who 
worked in common with them. In the maritime towns, they 
served either in families, as domestics, or at mechanical em- 
ployments ; and in neither case did they fare worse than their 
white comrades. In the country, where they were much less 
numerous, altogether, and in no instance exceeded three 
or four in the hands of one proprietor, they lived as well as 
their masters, and not unfrequently sat down to the same 
table, as their emancipated brethren do at this day, in the 
interior of Pennsylvania, and the eastern states. For se-~ 
rious offences they were committed to the common houses of 
correction, to which disorderly persons of all colours were 
sent. To be sold to the West Indies, was the most formi- 
dable punishment, with which they could be threatened <^ 
visited. 

Popular opinion early and spontaneously proscribed th^ 
slave trade ; disgrace attached to the character of those who 
were engaged in it principally or ministerially ; cases of sea^ • 
men perishing by the homicidal climate of Guinea, or in coii- • 
tests with the natives ; and of death-bed repentance at home^, 
rendering audible and unequivocal the voice of consciencef. 



* The law of Pennsylvania, of 1728, imposing- a duty upon the importa- 
tion of netfroes, allo^vs a drawback on re-exportation. 



SLAVE TRADE. 

confirmed the public antipathy. Had there been a general SECT 
readiness to engage in the traffic, the opportunity could not 
have been found. The British merchants, and the Royal 
African Company in particular, which I shall mention further 
by and by, were too eager for the exclusive enjoyment, to al- 
low the provincials to share in it in a material degree. The 
American vessels which appeared on the African coast, were 
regarded as interlopers, infringing a precious monopoly. The 
Reports of the " Proceedings in the House of Commons on 
the state of the African Company and of the Trade to Africa," 
inform us, that " proofs were given by the Company of some 
ships trading directly from Virginia, and other parts of Ame- 
rica, and disposing of their cargoes of tobacco and other coiu- 
modities, the produce of that country, on the coast, and in re- 
turn purchasing slaves and returning whence they came, under 
the suifrance or rather open toleration of the governors and 
other subordinate persons in command." This fact of the 
toleration of Americans was brought forvv^ard " to prove the 
injury the forts and governors were to the trade to Africa ;" it 
being also in evidence that" the governors were all traders on 
their own account, or factors for principals in England, and en- 
deavoured to forestall the market." In stating the value of 
the British exports to America, Lord Sheffield remarks, in 
his Observations, that there was to be added " between two 
and three hundred thousand pounds sterling, sent to Africa 
annually for the purchase of slaves which were chiefly import- 
ed by British merchants into the American provinces." But 
it is superfluous to adduce testimonv of this kind, since no his- 
torical fact is more notorious, than that by far the greater 
portion of the negroes introduced into North America, was 
brought by British vessels, on account of British merchants, 
and under the special sanction of the British parliament, 

- 4. If the government of the mother country, to favour the 
British trade with Africa, laboured to prevent the exclusion 
of negro slaves even from New Hampshire, its policy on this 
head would naturally be of a most determined and jealous 
character in reference to the southern provinces. The history 
of Virginia furnishes illustrations as creditable to her, as dis- 
graceful to the British councils ; and, though that history in 
general may never have been examined by the writers of the 
Edinburgh Review, they cannot be supposed to have been 
ignorant of the following passage of Brougham's Colonial Po- 
licy. — "E very measure proposed by the Colonial Legislatures, 
that did not meet the entire concurrence of the British Cabinet, 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

IT I. was sure to be rejected, in the last instance, by the crown. 
In the colonies, the direct power of the crown, backed by all 
the resources of the mother country, prevents any measure 
obnoxious to the crown from being carried into effect, even by 
the unanimous efforts of the colonial legislature. If examples 
were required, we might refer to the history of the abolition 
of the slave trade in Virginia. A duty on the importation of 
negroes had been imposed, amounting to a pi-ohibition. One 
assembly, induced by a temporary peculiarity of circum- 
stances, repealed this law by a bill which received the imme- 
diate sanction of the crown. Butnever afterwards could the 
royal assent be obtained to a renewal of the duty, although, 
as we are told by Mr. Jefferson, all manner of expedients 
were tried for this purpose, by almost every subsequent as- 
sembly that met under the colonial government. The very 
first assembly that met under the new constitution, finally 
prohibited the traffic."* 

I have suggested the circumstances which would greatly ex- 
tenuate any degree of eagerness, on the part of the first inhabi- 
tants of the southern provinces, in receiving the British slave 
ships. Whatever this may have been in Virginia, the oppo- 
site disposition certainly manifested itself in her legislature, 
before the expiration of the seventeenth century. The learn- 
ed Judge Tucker, of that state, whose notes on the Commen- 
taries of Blackstone are so highly and justly valued among 
us, furnishes a list of no less than twenty-three acts, impos- 
ing duties on slaves imported, which occur in the various 
compilations of Virginia laws. The first bears date in the 
year 1699 ; and the real design of all of them was, not reve- 
nue, but the repression of the importation. In general, the 
buver was charged with the duty, in order to secure a better 
reception for the acts in England, and particularly to render 
them less obnoxious to the African Company. The royal as- 
sent was first obtained, not without great difficulty, to a duty 
of five per cent, in this shape. Requisitions for aids from the 
crown, on particular occasions, furnished pretexts for in- 
creasing the duty from five to ten, and finally to twenty per 
cent. In 1 772, most of the duties previously imposed were re- 
enacted, and the assembly transmitted, at the same time, a 
petition to the throne, which speaks almost all that could be 
desired for the confusion of our slanderers. Judge Tucker 
has made the following extract from it, in his Appendix to 
the 1st vol. pt. 2. of Blackstone : — 

• :Book II. Sect. i'. 



SLAVE TRADE. i 

"'' We are encouraged to look up to the throne, and im-SECT 
plore your majesty's paternal assistance in averting a cala-' 
mity of a most alarming nature." 

" The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast 
of Africa, hath long been considered as a trade of great inhu- 
manity^ and under its present encoiiragement^we have too much 
reason to fear, will endanger the very existence of your ma- 
jesty's American dominions." 

" We are sensible that some of your majesty's subjects of 
Great Britain may reap emoluments from this sort of traffic, 
but when we consider that it greatly retards the settlement of 
the colonies, with more useful inhabitaJits ^ and may in time 
have the most destructive influence, we presume to hope, that 
the interest of a fexu will be disregarded when placed in com- 
petition with the security and happiness of such numbers of 
your majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects." 

" Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly 
beseech your majesty to remove all those restraints on your 
majesty'' s governors of this colony^ which inhibit their assent- 
ing to such laws as might check so very pernicious a com- 
merce." 

.• The petition proved vmavailing. In the first clause of the 
itidependent constitution of Virginia, " the inhuman use of 
the royal negative" in this matter, is enumerated among the 
jpeasons of the separation from the mother country. Mr. 
Burke, as we have seen in one of the quotations which I 
have made from his speech on the Conciliation with Ame- 
rica, recognized her "refusal to deal any more in the inhu- 
man traffic of the negro slaves, as one of the causes of her 
quarrel with Great Britain." I must claim permission to 
connect here with the petition, a statement subjoined to it, by 
Judge Tucker, which shows that it did not cost the British go- 
vernment a moment's deliberation to sacrifice " the security 
and happiness of such numbers of his majesty's dutiful and 
loyal subjects," to " the interest of the few" in England. " I 
have lately been favoured with the perusal of a manuscript 
copy of a letter from Granville Sharp, Esq. of London, to a 
friend of the prime minister, dated March 25th, 1794, in 
^hich he speaks of the petition thus : " I myself was desired, 
by a letter from America, to inquire for an answer to this ex- 
traordinary Virginia petition. I waited on the Secretary of 
'State, and was informed by himself that the petition ruas rc- 
^eived^ but that (he apprehended) no answer would he given?"* 

That the inclination to impose the yoke of perpetual bon- 
da|ge on any part of their fellow creatures, if it ever existed 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

among' the majority of the Virginia planters, soon subsided, is 
manifest from an act which is traced to 1662, declaring that 
" no Englishman^ trader, or other, who should bring in an^ 
Indians as servants, and assign them over to any other, should 
sell them ior slaves^ nor for any other time than Pmglish of like 
age could serve by act of assembly." Thus early was the 
state of slavery prohibited, where it was not exacted by the 
higher authority: and the first opportunity was taken, after the 
declaration of independence, to extinguish the detestable 
commerce so long forced upon the province. In October, 1778, 
during the tumult and anxiety of revolution, the general as- 
seinbly passed a law, prohibiting, under heavy penalties, the 
further importation of slaves, and declaring that every slave 
imported thereafter, should be immediately free. The exam- 
ple of Virginia was followed at different times before the 
date of the federal constitution, by most of the other states. 

While the mother country withheld from the provinces the 
power of arresting importation, and incessantly added to the 
number of the blacks, the abolition of slavery itself was 
wholly out of the question. It was rendered impossible for 
the southern colonists, consistently with their own preserva- 
tion ; and had it seemed practicable, and been attempted by 
any of the colonial legislatures, the royal negative would 
have been still more readily and vigorously exercised than in 
the case of importation. Even the West India Islands en- 
deavoured, from time to time, to limit the importation of 
slaves into their ports ; and were counteracted by the African 
interest^ as it was called, in England. In 1744, the legislature 
of* Jamaica laid duties amounting nearly to prohibition ; in 
1774, they made a similar experiment, alleging as their mo- 
tive, the apprehension excited in the island by the numbers of 
the negroes imported ; the merchants of England engaged 
in the trade, took the alarm on their side, petitioned against 
the duties, and obtained a royal order to the governor of 
Jamaica to discontinue the levy. 

In the history of the relations of Great Britain with the 
American colonies in general, there is no circumstance more» 
abundantlj^ evidenced, than her steady determination to 
maintain her slave trade in the greatest activity and extent, 
whatever might be their feelings of disgust or apprehension; 
and however gloomy the aspect v/hich the continuation of it 
gave to their destinies. Their permanent welfare, their im- 
mediate comfort, weighed as nothing in the balance with the 
prosperity of the Royal African Company, and the plenty ol 
American products. 



SLAVE TRADE. 

All tfiat the English writers now pour forth about the in- SEGl 
Liinsic horrors and miseries of negro slavery; its obvious ^-^^ 
;ind certain destructiveness to the morals of the masters ; and 
its equally manifest and inevitable tendencv to quench the 
spirit of liberty, and banish social order and domestic peace ; 
all, if we admit it to be true, recoils upon Great Britain, who, 
having these things before her e37es, yet, from the thirst of 
gain, — in order that her commerce and revenue should re- 
ceive every possible increase — opened this even worse than 
Pandora's box, upon the race of her offspring in this hemis- 
phere, and remorselessly continued to replenish it, in spite 
of their remonstrances and terrors, as long as the)^ remained 
subject to her control. 

The act xvhich dissolved the indentures of servants e7ilisting 
in his majesty''s service in America^ is the only one in the re- 
cords of the British parliament, that looked to the "tearing 
oft" manacles" here. Not a single step was ever taken by the 
British government, towards the suppression or mitigation, 
of any form of bondage in the North American provinces. 

5. From the facts which I have adduced, we may confi- 
dently infer, that the North American provinces would, but 
for the oppressive and avaricious opposition of the mother 
country, have put a stop to the importation of negroes at a 
much earlier period than the era of their independence. We 
may even believe, that, with their general dispositions and 
views, they would have gone further ; since the multiplica- 
tion of the slaves presented, next to the will of the British 
government, the most serious obstacle to abolition. We 
have scarcely room to doubt of the course which New Eng- 
land, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, in particular, would 
have pursued, in their more favourable domestic situation, 
and under the influence of their more rigorous principles, had 
they been free to act as these must have prompted. As little 
doubt can be entertained, that, if their colonial connexion 
with Great Britain had continued, they would have been com- 
pelled to submit to the continuance of the evils in question. 

The voice of religion and humanity crying out against the 
traffic in human flesh, was heard at an earlier period, and more 
distinctly, from the bosom of these colonies, than from any 
other part of the British dominions. Clarkson has narrated 
at large, in his History of the Abolition, the systematic efforts 
towards that end, of benevolent individuals on this side of the 
Atlantic. He was unacquainted with the pamphlet of George 
Keith, written before the end of the seventeenth ceiitury; but 



NEGRO SLAVERY /iiiU 

he has celebrated the labours of Lay, Sandiford, Woolman, 
Benezet, and Rush. The Scottish critics might have learned 
from him, that the writings which gave the first impulse, and 
exerted the widest influence, in the cause which they haver 
united with him in exalting to the skies, issued from thisr 
quarter ;* that a numerous society devoted to that cause, and 
composed of men of all religious denominations, was organ- 
ized here twelve years before any association for the same 
purpose existed in England. There, a multitude of writers 
and speakers have contended for the justice^ humanity^ and 
evangelical character of the slave trade : here, we have had 
no instance of a formal vindication of it, in any shape. I 
have never heard of an American speech or pamphlet on the 
subject, which did not acknowledge its atrocity. 

England renounced the slave trade on the 25th of March, 
1807, by a law which enacted, that no vessels should clear out 
for slaves from any port within the British dominions after the 
1st of May, 1807, and that no slave should be landed in the 
colonies after the 1st of March^l808. She has claimed the me- 
rit of having set the example of this renunciation to the world. 
Lord Castlereagh boasted, in the House of Commons, on the 
9th of February, 1818, that, on the subject of making the slave 
traffic punishable as a crime, Great Britain had led the way. 
Virginia was, however, a sovereign and independent state, 
when she abolished the traffic in 1778. Pennsylvania, Mas- 
sachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, had the same cha- 
racter, when they prohibited it to their citizens, in whatever 
degree or form, and under the severest penalties, in the years 
1780, 1787, 1788. On the 16th of March, 1792, Denmark 
promulged a law on the subject of the slave trade, which pro- 
vided for its total cessation on the partor in behalf of Danish 
subjects, at the beginning of the year 1803 ; and which pre- 
scribed that all importations of slaves into the Danish domi- 
nions should cease at the same period. This law was carried 
into complete execution, according to the letter, and has 
been faithfully observed. It established, besides, some very 
salutary regulations for the improvement of the mind, morals, 
and general condition of the blacks in the Danish Islands. 

The American continental Congress, so called, passed a re- 
solution against the purchase of slaves imported from Africa j 
and published an exhortation to the colonies to abandon the 



* Scarcely an)' suggestion on the subject, of real importance, has been, 
made in England, which is not to be found in Anthony Benezet's \^'ork, en- 
titled " Some Hi^btoncal Account of Gwihea." 



SLAVE TRADE. 

trade aftogether. The third Congress of the United States, SEC: 
linder the present federal constitution, prohibited the carrying ^^ 
^ of the slave trade from our ports. But in order to show 
ihore fully, the grounds upon which the American govern- 
*ient may contest the merit, both of priority and zeal with 
me British, I will transcribe from the general index to the 
laws of the former, the abstract of what it had done in this 
j^espect, before the date of the British prohibition. 
1-; No citizens or othei-s to build or fit out vessels, &c. to carry on the slave 

.trade to or between foreign countries, &c. — Vessels fitted out, 8ic. to carrv 

♦ ou the slave trade, to be forfeited, &c. (22d March, 1794.) 
3. Two thousand dollars forfeit' for persons fitting' out vessels, or aiding", 8ic, 

3. Owners, he. of foreign vessels, suspected of intention to trade in slaves, 
» &c. to g'ive bond, &c. 

4. P'orfcit of two hundred dollars by citizens, for every person received on 
board for the purpose of being sold as a slave, &.c. A moiety to the per- 

' son suing, &.c 

3^. The importation of slaves into the Mississippi territory from foreign 
'parts prohibited, under penalty of three hundred dollars for each one ; 
and slaves imported entitled to freedom. (7th April, 1798.) 

6. Citizens or residents proliibited from holding any right or property in 
vessels employed in transporting slaves from one foreign country to ano- 

' ther, on pain of forfeiting their right of property, and also double tlie 
=^alue of that right in money, and likewise double the value of the interest 
in the slaves. 

7. Citizens or residents not to serve on board vessels of the United States 
employed in the transportation of slaves from one foreign countiy to 

. another, &c. on pain of fine and imprisonment, &c. (10th May, 1800.) 

8. Citizens voluntarily serving on board foreign ships employed in the slave 
. trade, liable to disabilities, penalties, Sic. 

9. Commissioned vessels of the United States may seize vessels employed 
contrary to this act, &c. 

10. Vessels seized for trading in slaves, contrary to this act, together with 
.tackle, guns, goods on board, &.c. except slaves, forfeited, &c. 

11. Commanders of commissioned vessels to take officers and crews of ves- 
sels employed contrary to this act, &c. into custody, &c. 

Iz. District and circuit courts to have cognizance of offences against the pro- 
hibitions of this act. 

13. Nothing in this act to authorize the bi-inglng into any state prohibited 
^persons. 

14. A moiety of forfeitures to Informers, except where the prosecution is 
first Instituted oti behalf of the United States. 

15. After the 1st of April, 1803, masters of vessels not to bring Into any 
port, where the laws of a state prohibit the importation, any negro, mu- 
iatto, &c. not a native, a citizen, registered seaman, &.c. under the penalty 

, of one thousand dollars. (28th Feb. 1803.) 

16. The persons sued under this act, may be held to special bail. 

17. Nothing in this act to prohibit the admission of Indians. 

18. Vessels arriving with negroes, mulattoes, or other prohibited persons on 
board, not to be admitted to entry, &c. 

19. If any negro, &c. be landed In any prohibited port or place, &c. the ves- 
sel, &c. to be forfeited: A moiety of the forfeiture to the informer. 

20. The officers of the customs to notice arid be governed by, the laws of 
states prohibiting the admission of negroes, fkc. and vi^lantly to carry 
them Into effect, &c. 

Vol. I.— S s 



NEGTIO SLAVERY AND 

21. The importation of slaves prohibited after the 1st of Januar)-, 1808. 
(2d Marcli. 1807.) 

22. Vessels fitted out or sailing', after the 1st of January, 1808, for the 
purpose of transportinsf slaves to any port or place within the jurisdic- 
tion of the United States, may be seized, condemned, &.c. in any of the 
circuit or district courts, for the districts where the vessels may be found 
or seized. 

23. Persons fitting out vessels, &c. to be employed in the slave trade, after 
the 1st of January, 18U8, or aiding or abetting, Sec. to forfeit severalh , 
twenty thousand dollars. — A moiety of the forfeiture to the person pro- 
secuting. 

24. Five thousand dollars forfeit for taking on board from any of the coasts 
or kingdoms of Africa, after the 1st of January, 1808, any negro, mulatto, 
&c. for the purpose of selling them as slaves within the jurisdiction of the 
United States, Sic. — A moiety of the forfeiture to the person prosecuting, 
&c. 

25. Vessels in which negroes, &.c. have been transported, their tackle, ap- 
parel, &c. to be forfeited, &c. 

26. Neither the importer, nor persons claiming under him, to hold any right 
to any negro, &c. brought within the United States, &c. in violation of thi.") 
law. but such negro, he. to remain subject to the regulations of tlie legis- 
latures of the several states, &c. 

27. Citizens or residents taking on board, after the 1st of January, 1808, 
from the coasts or kingdoms of Africa, &c. any negro, mulatto, &.c. and 
transporting and selling them wiihin the jurisdiction of the United Slates, 
as slaves, &c. to suffer imprisonment from Jive to ten years, and pay a fine, 
from one to ten thousand dollars. 

28. Forfeit of eight hundred dollars for selling any negro, &c. imported 
from any foreign kingdom, See. after the 31st of December, 1807, Sec. — A 
moiety of the forfeiture to the person prosecuting, &c. — The forfeiture 
not to extend to the seller or purchaser of any negTO, &c. disposed of by 
virtue of any regulations of the legislatures of the several states, in pur- 
suance of this act and the constitution of the United States. 

29. Vessels found, after the 1st of January, 1808, in any river, port, bay, &c. 
within the jurisdictional limits of the United States, &c. having on board I 
any negro, &c. for the purpose of selling them as slaves, &c. to be Ibr- 
feited, together with their tackle, goods on board. &c. 

SO. The president may employ armed vessels to cruize on any part of the 
coast where he may judge attempts will be made to violate this act, and 
instruct commanders of armed vessels to seize and bring in vessels found I 
on the high seas contravening the provisions of this law, &c. — Masters of I 
vessels seized, &.c. liable to prosecution, and to a fine, not exceeding teni 
thousand dollars, and to imprisonment from tivo to four years. — The proceeds - 
of vessels, &c. seized, prosecuted, and condemned, to be divided equally i 
between the United States and the officers and men, &.c. whether of the ^ 
navy or revenue cutters, and distributed as in the case of prizes, &c. The 
officers and men thus entitled are to safe keep every negro, miilatto, he, 
and deliver them to persons appointed to receive them, £c. 

31. Masters of vessels of less than forty tons burden, not to take on board 
after the 1st of January, 1808, nor transport, any negro, &c. to any port on 
place whatever, for the purpose of disposing of him as a slave, on penalty i 
of forfeiting eight hundred dollars. — A moiety of the forfeiture to the per- 
son prosecuting, &c. — But nothing in this section to prohibit the transport- 
ing, on any river or inland bay of the sea, within the jurisdiction of tlie ■ 
United States, any negro, &:c. not imjjorted contrary to the provisions of' 
this act, in any vessel or species of craft whatever. 



SLAVE TRADE. 

52. Masters of vessels, of the burden of forty tons or more, after the Ist of SEC 

January, 1808, sailing coastwise, &c. andliaving on board any negro, &c. \^^ 
to be transported and sold as slaves, &c. to make out and subscribe dupli- 
cate manifests of every negro, &c. and deliver the manifests to the collec- 
tor or surveyor, &c. The master, owner, &c. to swear that the pereons 
were not imported after the 1st of January, 1808, &c. — The collector or 
surve3-orto certify, &c. grant a permit to proceed, &c. 

53. Vessels departing without the master's having made out and subscribed 
duplicate manifests of every negro, &c. on board, &c. or takiiig on 
board any other negro, &c. than those specified in the manifests, to be for- 
feited, together with tackle, apparel, &c. 

.34. The master, &c. to forfeit one thousand dollars for every negro, &c. 

transported, &c. contrary to this act. — A moiety of the forfeiture to the 
' person prosecuting, &c. 
,S5. The master, &.c. of every vessel of forty tons or more, sailing coastwise 

after the 1st of January, 1808, and having on board any negro, 8ic. to sell, 
' &c. arriving in one port of the United States from another, to deliver the 

certified manifest, &c. and swear to the truth of it, &c — If the collector, 
'! &c. is satisfied, &.c. h'e is to grant a permit for the landing of the negro, 
f &c. 
■36. Masters, &c. neglecting or refusing to deliver the manifests, or landingany 

negro, &.c. before deUvering manifests, &,c. to forfeit ten thousand dollars. 
.' A moiety of tlie forfeiture to the person prosecuting, 8ic. , 

^i It is seen by the foregoing abstract, that federal America 
.interdicted the trade from her ports, thirteen years before 
.Great Britain; that she made "it punishable as a crime,'* 
^even years before ; that she fixed, four years sooner, 
-the period for non-importation — which period was earlier 
"than that determined upon by Great Britain for her colonies. 
^e ought not to overlook the circumstance, that these mea- 
sures were taken, by a legislature composed in considerable 
J.part, of the representatives of slave-holding states ; slave- 
holders themselves, in whom, of course, according to the doc- 
. trine of the Edinburgh Review, conscience had " suspended 
tits functions," and "justice, gentleness, and pity," were ex- 
ttinguished. What are we to think of the British Parliament, 
^ which suffered itself to be outstripped thus by such men ? and 
^;When would it have abolished the trade, had it contained 
van equal proportion of slave-holders from the West In- 
"®dies ?* 

* In truth, the representatives from our southern states have 
been foremost in testifying their abhorrence of the traffic ; an 
'^ abhorrence springing from a deep sense, not merely of its ini- 
quity, but of the magnitude of the evil which it has entailed 
upon their country. It was only at the last session of the 

• Mr. Pitt said, (1792) that the " Parliament being now fully convinced of 
the cruelty and injustice of the slave trade, it was their duty to put an end to 
it. Were" the West India planters to be con.sultcd they might think differ- 
ently," &c. (P.irliamentary History.) 



KEGRO SLAMiRY AND 

American Congress, (March 1st, 1819,) that a member from 
' Virginia proposed the following regulation, to which the 
House of Representatives agreed without a division. — "'Every 
person who shall import into the United States, or knowingly 
aid or abet the importation into the United States, of any 
Afi-ican negro, or other person, with intent to sell or use such 
negro, or other person, as a slave, or shall purchase any such 
slave, knowing him or her to be thus imported, shall, on con- 
viction thereof, in any circuit court of the United States, be 
punished with deathP The rarity of capital punishment in 
the penal code of the United States, and the extreme aver- 
sion from a recourse to it, universally prevailing, make this 
instance a potent proof of the sincerit}' of the dispositions 
which we profess respecting the slave trade. Additional 
evidence not less striking, is afforded by the act which pass- 
ed and became a law at the same time, and of which the 
printed abstract is as follows : 

" 1. An act in addition to the acts prohibiting the slave 
trade. (3d March, 1819.) 

" The president may employ the armed vessels of the Uni- 
ted States to cruise on the American coast, or coast of Africa, 
to enforce the acts of congress prohibiting the slave trade. 
Vessels employed, contrary to law, in the traffic of slaves, 
may be seized by the armed vessels, and brought into port. 
The proceeds to be equally divided between the United States 
and the captors, whether by an armed vessel or revenue cut- 
ter. The captors to safe keep and deliver the negroes, &c. to 
the marshal, &c. transmitting a descriptive list to the presi- 
dent ; and the commanders are to apprehend every person 
found on board the offending vessels, being officers and crew, 
and deliver them over to the civil authority. The president 
to make regulations for the safe keeping, support, and re- 
moval out of the United States, of the negroes, &;c. delivei-- 
ed and brought within their jurisdiction, and ma}- appoint 
agents on the coast of Africa, to receive negroes, &c. A 
bounty of twenty-five dollars to the officers and crews of com- 
missioned vessels and revenue cutters, for every negro, &c. 
delivered to the marshal, &c. Prosecution, by information, 
against persons holding negroes, &c. unlawfully introduced. 
Fifty dollars to informant for each negi"o, &c. thus deliver- 
ed to the marshal from the unlawful holder, by judgment of 
the court, besides the usual penalties." 

6. If there be any two pieces of history which Great Bri- 
tain should wish to see extinguished, in particular, they are 
the accounts of the African slave trade itself, and of her abo- 



SIAVE TRADE. 

' IJtion bf that trade. Clarkson's relation of the Abolition is a SEcn 
memorial, which, though it has left nothing that is any wav 
creditable in the progress of the affair, uneinblazoned, and 
magnifies inordinately the lustre and utility of the result, still 
presents a balance of infamy, which, in my opinion, renders 
it desirable that the whole were expunged, for the honour of 
human nature. The enormity of the system of crime and 
cruelty which he lays open ; the hardened depravity of the 
sea-ports which he visited ; the pusillanimity and prevarica- 
tion of witnesses ; the effrontery and security of culprits ; the 
mean and wicked arts practised by the highest and the lowest 
of the kingdom, to defeat his purpose ; the long resistance of 
parliament, after the fullest proof of the facts ; the tenor of 
the speeches delivered there by some of the members in oppo- 
sition ; and many other similar traits salient in his book, are 
far from being redeemed by the act of abolition, especially 
when attention is given to some of the grounds upon which 
it was obtained, and to the sequel, which I propose to notice 
in due time. We Americans would trust it to the bitterest 
enemy of these States, to deduce a narrative of their aboli- 
tion of the traffic ; challenge him to lay on what colours 
he pleased ; and, provided he would take the facts as his 
ground v/ork, remain assured that while the world posses- 
sed Clarkson's work, we could but rise in its estimation. 

As a general proposition, it is undeniable, that the nation 
which wrested the African from his home, and sold him into 
perpetual bondage, is as criminal, at least, as those by whom he 
•was purchased, and who may have retained him in that state : 
It is no less evident, that after having thrown millions of ne- 
groes into one quarter of the world, and reaped the profits of 
the horrible traffic, it is not for her to upbraid the purchasers 
for using their bargain, and to summon them, in the name of 
justice, humanity, and natural rights, to relinquish at once 
their hold, at whatever loss and risk to themselves. Yet this 
is Avhat is done towards the Americans, by the writers of the 
Edinburgh Review, in their character of Britons, and upon 
the foundation of the British abolition of the slave trade. It 
is, therefore, fair to pass in review the facts which go to show, 
that they have no such privilege, but are obnoxious to the 
maxims which I have just stated. . 

The English embarked in the slave trade in the year 1562i 
In that year they carried slaves to Hispaniola ; and the first 
cargo was obtained with circumstances of abominable fraud.* 

* See the History of Hawkins's Voyage in Hackliiyt'3 Collection, or in the 
4th Book, c. ii. of Edwards's History of the West Indies. Hawkins was after- 



6 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

.RT T. It proved lucrative, and immediately, associations were form<*, 
"'*'^^^*-' ed in England, among the most opulent and distinguished men 
of the countr}', to follow up the adventure. Soon the object 
began to be considered as of national importance, and so early 
as the 16th of James I, a royal charter w^as granted to a numn 
ber of eminent citizens of London, as a joint stock company, 
to carry on a trade to Africa, with an exclusive privilege. 
The private merchants, envious of the harvest which seemed 
to await the company, interloped upon the African coast, and 
so embarrassed the trade that the charter was abandoned. 
Another company was created by Charles I; but it shared the 
same fate, from the same cause, — the cupidity and miscon- 
duct of the unlicensed adventurers. " On the accession of 
Charles II," says Davenant,* " a representation being soon 
made to him, that the British plantations in America were, by 
degrees, advancing to such a condition as necessarily required 
a greater yearly supply of servants and labourers than could 
well be spared from England, without the danger of depopu- 
lating his majesty's native dominions, his majesty did {upon 
account of supplying' these plantations xvith negroes) publicly 
invite all his subjects to the subscription of a new joint stockj , 
for recovering and carrying on the trade to Africa." 

His majesty's subjects obeyed the call with alacritv ; and 
some of the most imposing names of the kingdom appear at 
the head of the ample subscription list. But poachers swarm- 
ed again, and "^lo^z^tditheii- natural right ^?ai(\ parliament found 
it expedient, in 1697, to lay open the trade for a term of years. 
The recrimination between the privileged and the interloping 
traders, unfolds abuses and enormities committed before the 
commencement of the 18th century, similar to those which 
were proved to parliament, when the question of abolition 
was agitated. It would be ne»?dless for me to detail the prO'^ 
gress of the African trade to the highest consideration and 
favour with the government; the contest maintained with the 
commercial nations of the continent for the monopoly of that 

wards knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and made Treasurer of the Navy. " The • 
success which attended the first expedition to tiuinea," says Edwards, • 
" appears to have attracted the notice and excited the avai'ice of the British 
government. We find Hawkins in the following year, appointed to the com- 
mand of one of the queen's" ships, th^ Jesus, of 700 tons, and with the Solojnon, 
the 'J'iffer, and the Swallow, sent a second time on the same trading expedi- 
tion. In reg-ard to Hawkins, he was, I admit, a Murderer and a Robber. 
His avowed pmposc in sailing to Guinea was to seize by stratagem, or 
force, and cany away the unsuspecting natives, in the view of selling them 
as slaves, &c." 

* Reflections on the African Trade, voir, of his Works. 



SLAVE TRADE. J 

irade, and the successful advances made to this " consum- SECT 
mation of wickedness." Factories were formed on the v-'^'v 
African coast ; forts built ; grants of money obtained from 
parliament;* and in the year 1792, twenty-six acts of that 
body, encouraging and sanctioning the trade, could be enu- 
merated by its friends. 

In the year 1689, England made a regular convention with 
Spain, for suppl3ang the Spanish West Indies with negro 
slaves from the island of Jamaica. The twelfth article of 
the treaty of Utrecht, (1713) "grants to her Britannic majesty 
and to the company of her subjects appointed for that pur- 
pose, (the South Sea Compaiiy) — as well the subjects of Spain 
as all others being excluded — the contract for introducing 
negi-oes into several parts of the dominions of his Catholic 
majesty in America, (commonly called El pact o de el assiento 
de neg'ros') at the rate of 4,800 negroes yearly, for the space 
of thirty years successively." ^ 

To this compact there have been two pointed references of ^i 
late in the British parliament, which I will repeat here in fur- • 
therexplanationof its character. " By the ti-eaty of Utrecht," ^ 
said Mr. Brougham, (l6th June, 1812) "which the execrations ', 
of ages have left inadequately censured, Great Britain was ' 
content to obtain, as the whole price of Ramillies and Blen- \ 
heim, an additional share of the accursed slave trade." — ^ 

Mr. C. Grant, jun. said, (Feb. 9th, 1818) "• that in the be- 
ginning of the last centmy, we deemed it a great advantage to 
obtain by the Assiento contract, the right of supplying with 
slaves the possessions of that very power which we were now 
paying for abolishing the trade. During the negociations which 
preceded the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, we higgled for four 
years longer of this exclusive trade; and in the treaty of Mad- 
rid, we clung to the last remains of the Assiento contract." 

By degrees the English merchants engrossed permanently 
two-thirds of the whole African exportation, and became the 
carriers for the European world. They either supplied the 
French Islands directly, or served as the factors of the French 
trader on the coast of Africa. They occasionally hired 
their ships to France, to be manned and equipped in the 
French ports. They stocked Trinidad, and the province of 
Caraccas, by contract with the Spanish government ; and, in 
the years 1786 and 1788, the Havannah. The Philippine 

* From 1759 to 1744, it anmially voted to the African Company 10,000/. 
sterling, to pay their debts ; in 1744, the grant was doubled by reason of the 
war with France and Spsun. 



18 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

^RT I. Company of Spain, when invested with the exclusive privi« 
'^''^^ lege of importing- slaves into South America, employed, by 
contract, British vessels, manned by British seamen. The 
re-e^qjortation from the British West Indies, for double pro- 
fit, was so far encouraged, that by the West India free port 
act of 1766, foreign vessels were allowed to carry from the 
free ports, negroes imported in British ships. England es- 
tablished a higher reputation than any other power for skill iij 
the management of the trade, and in the choice and prepara- 
tion of the articles of barter. Among her chief exports tp 
Africa were British spirits, rum and brandy, guns, cutlasses^ 
and ammunition. Of three millions of pounds of gunpowder, 
which she exported in one year, one-half was sent to the West 
Coast alone ; and, as I have already had occasion to remark, 
several thousand persons were exclusively employed in Bir- 
mingham, in manufacturing guns for that market. In a Report 
of the Board of Trade, dated 17 75, stress is laid upon the ne- 
cessity of encouraging the trade of fire-arms to Africa. 

England employed from one hundred and fifty to two hun- 
dred ships in the slave trade, and carried off, on the average, 
forty thousand negroes annually ; at times, one-half more, 
in the year. In 1 768, the number which she took from the 
coast between Cape Blanco and the Rio Congo, reached 
59,400, more than double the share that fell to all the other 
traders. Mr. Pitt said, in 1792, that Jamaica had imported 
one hundred and fifty thousand negroes in the course of twen- 
ty years, and that this was admitted to be only one-tenth of 
the traffic. .Mr. Dundas said, on the same occasion, that, " in 
1791, the whole British importation consisted of 74,000, not 
less than 34,000 of which were exported for the service of 
foreign nations." 

The Pailiamentary Report of 1789, on the slave trade, 
states, that the whole number of negroes brought to Jamaica, 
from the year 1655 to 1787, amounted to 676,276, of whom 
31,181 died in the harbour, from the noxious quality of the 
drugs employed in making them up for sale. The Edinburgh 
Review made the following statements in the years 1805 and 
1806. 

" Before the American war, the Dutch used to carry, in \ 
their own bottoms, from Africa to Guiana, ten thousand ne- 
groes annually ; and it is proved, by papers laid before par- ■ 
liament, but which, we believe, have not yet been printed, , 
that this importation was greatly increased during the last: 
war, when those possessions were in the hands of Great Bri- 
tain. It is certainly not over-rating its present amount, to 



SLAVE TllADE. g 

-estimate the yearly supply of negroes carried to our conquer- SECT. 
«d colonies at fifteen thousand, — about one-half the supply s^^v 
of our own islands, which is the subject of the abolition 
question."* 

"The 38,000 slaves exported annually from Africa in Bri- 
tish vessels, are only in a small proportion destined for the use 
of the colonies ; above 22,000 are stated by the friends of the 
trade to be intended for the foreign settlements. To this must 
be added a large number of slaves carried by British vessels 
under cover of a neutral flag. From certain documents which 
we have had an opportunity of consulting, we cannot estimate 
these at less than 8000; and the si\pply of the conquered co- 
lonies considerably exceeds 10,000 annually."! 

Authority is to be found for much higher estimates than 
these. I take the following from Anthony Benezet's Histo- 
rical Account of the Slave Trade. 

" In a book printed in Liverpool, called, The Liverpool 
Memorandum, which contains ainongst other things, an ac- 
count of the trade of that port, there is an exact list of the 
vessels employed in the Guinea trade, and of the number of 
slaves imported in each vessel ; by which it appears, that in 
the year 1753, the number imported to America by one hun- 
dred and one vessels belonging to that port, amounted to up- 
wards of thirty thousand, and from the number of v^essels em- 
ployed by the African Company, in London and Bristol, we 
may, with some degree of certainty, conclude, there are one 
hundred thousand negroes purchased and brought on board 
our ships yearly from the coast of Africa. This is confirmed 
in Anderson's History of Trade and Commerce, lately print- 
ed ; where it is said, "that England supplies her American 
colonies with negro slaves, amounting in number to above one 
hundred thousand every year." When the vessels are full 
freighted with slaves, they sail for our plantations in America, 
and may be two or three months in the voyage, during which 
time, from the filth and stench that is among them, distem- 
pers frequently breakout, which carry off commonly a fifth, a 
fourth, )^ea sometimes a third or more of them ; so that taking 
all the slaves together, that are brought on board our ships 
yearly, one may reasonably suppose that at least ten thousand 
of them die on the voyage. And in a printed account of the 
state of the negroes, in our plantations, it is supposed that a 
fourth part more or less die at the different islands, in what is 

* No. 13. t No. 16. 

Vol. L—T t 



) NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

RT I- called the seasoning. Hence it may be presumed, that at a 
'*'^^^ moderate computation of slaves who are purchased by our 
African merchants in a year, near thirty thousand die upon 
the voyage and in the seasoning. Add to this, the prodi- 
gious number who are killed in the incursions and intestine 
" wars, by which negroes procure the number of slaves wanted 
to load the vessels." 

The Edinburgh Review has declared that England is the 
nation Avhich "had most extensively pursued and most so?- 
lemnly authorized the slave trade ;" that she had been "piin- 
cipally instrumental in barring out from benighted Africa the 
blessings of Christianity and the comforts of civilization;" that 
it is she who had " checked or rather blasted in its bud the 
improvement of the African continent." The same strain is 
familiar in the speeches of Fox and Wilberforce. The latter 
reminded his countrymen, in 1814, in parliament, that they 
had enjoyed the largest share of the guilty profits of the slave 
trade. Mr. Pitt declared in 1792, that parliament ought to 
consider themselves as the authors of it. His more emphati-s 
cal language of the year preceding is recorded by Clarkson — 
^ " The truth is, there is no nation in Europe which has plunged 
so deeply into this guilt as Britain. We stopped the natural 
progress of civilization in Africa. We cut her off from the 
opportunity of improvement.. We kept her down in a state of 
darkness, bondage, ignorance, and bloodshed. We have there 
subverted the whole order of nature; we have aggravated every 
natural barbarity, and furnished to every man motives for 
committing under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility 
and perfidy against his neighbovir. Thus had the perversion 
of British commerce carried misery instead of happiness to 
one whole quarter of the globe. False to the very principles 
of trade, unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparable 
mischief had we done to that continent ! We had obtained as 
yet only so much knowledge of its productions as to show, that 
there was a capacity for trade, which we checked." That 
capacity was, indeed, checked, not incidentally alpne, but 
directly ; for, in order to obviate all obstruction to the slave , 
trade, pains were taken to prevent the Africans from cultir 
vating with success, the staples of their soil, — cotton, tobaccoi, , 
sugar and indigo. In this point, the English were, as in alll 
others, pre-eminently culpable, since the number of fort^ > 
Vhich they possessed along the coast, with districts round 
each of them, afforded them better means, than any other 
European nation possessed, of giving the natives a taste foi* 
agriculture and the true objects of commerce. ^ 



SLAVE TRADE. 3 

* f. The general character of the British slave trade has been SECT, 
so pourtrayed by the highest and ablest men of the British v^''^^ 
nation, that in describing it, I am supplied, in their language, 
with the strongest which I could wish to employ. The suffi- 
ciency of the following testimony will hardly be questioned. 
In the Debate on the Abolition in the year 1792, Mr. Wil- 
berforce said, " that of all the trades that disgraced human 
beings, this was the very worst. In others, however infa- 
mous, there were traits of something like humanity, but in 
this there was a total absence of them. It was a scene of uni- 
form, unadulterated, unsophisticated wickedness ; never was 
there a system so big with wickedness and cruelty." In the 
same debate, Mr. Beaufoy said — 

" Who does not recollect, that, by the evidence which the 
slave merchants themselves have given at your bar, it appears, 
that such, on board an African vessel, is the rate of mortality, 
that if the march of death were the same in the world at 
large, the whole human race would be extinguished in four- 
teen years, and the earth itself be converted into one vast 
charnel house. Show me a crime of any sort, and in the 
slave trade I will show you that crime in a state of tenfold 
aggravation. Give me an instance of guilt, atrocious and ab- , 
horred, and the slave trade will exhibit instances of that guilt, ] 
more inveterate, more strongly rooted in all, diffusing a more / 
malignant poison, and spreading a deeper horror. All other ^ 
injustice, all other modes of desolating natui-e, of blasting the ' 
happiness of man, and defeating the purposes of God, lose, in 
comparison with this, their very name and character of evil. 
Their taint is too mild to disgust, their deformity is too slight 
to offend. The shrieks of solitary murder ; whaL-.are they, 
when compared with the sounds of horror that daily and 
niglitly ascend from the hatchway of the slave ship! I have . 
heard of the cruelties of the Inquisitions of Portugal and Spain; 
but what is their scanty account of blood, when compared 
with that sweep of death, that boundless desolation which 
accompanies the negro traffic ! Superstition has been called j^ 
man's chief destroyer ; but superstition herself is less obdu- / 
rate, less persevering, less steadfast in her cruelty, than this / 
cool, reflecting, deliberate, remorseless commerce." 

In the debate of 1807, Sir Samuel Romilly said, " The 
cruelty and injustice of the slave trade had been established 
beyond a doubt. It had been shown to be carried on by ra- 
pine and robbery and murder ; by fomenting and encouraging 
wars ; by false accusations and imaginary crimes. The un- 
happy victims were torn away not only in the time of war, 



]SrEGRO SLAVERY AND 



i 



A.RT I. but of profound peace. They were then carried across the 
^^'^^ Atlantic in a manner too horrible to describe, and afterwards 
subjected to perpetual slavery." 

Lord Henry Petty said, " The slave trade produced in 
Africa, fraud and violence, robbery and murder. It gave birth 
to false accusations and a mockery of justice. It was the 
parent of every crime that could at once degrade and afflict 
the human race. After spreading vice and misery all over a 
continent, it doomed its unhappy victims to hardships and 
cruelties which were worse than death. Cruelty begat cruelty ; 
the system, wicked in its beginning, was equally so in its pro- 
gress," &c. 

The tone of the Edinburgh Reviewers has been in unisoil 
with that of the eloquent members of parliament. They have 
described the trade as " one long continuous crime, involving 
every possible definition of evil; combining the wildest phy- 
sical suffering with the most atrocious moral depravity;" as 
one " which condemned a whole quarter of the world to un- 
ceasing and ferocious warfare ; which annually exterminated 
more than fell during the bloodiest campaigns of European! 
hostility ; which regularly transported every six months, in 
(Circumstances of unparalleled affliction, more innocent per- 
sons than suffer in a century from the oppression of all the 
tyrannies in the world." In the 24th number of the Review, 
a picture was presented so hideous and so faithful, that the 
recollection of it would seem sufficient to have stayed any 
hand from hazarding, in the same frame, a comparison be- 
tween the humanity of England and that of any other nation, 
in reference to the sons of Africa. 

'' The history of the slave trade is the history of a war ofl 
more than two centuries, waged by men against human na- 
ture; a war too, carried on, not by ignorance and barbarism 
against knowledge and civilization ; not by half famished 
multitudes against a race blessed with all the arts of life, and 
softened and effeminated by luxury; but, as some strange Non- 
descript in iniquity, waged by unproA^oked strength against 
uninjuring helplessness, and with all the powers which long- 
periods of security and equal law had enabled the assailants 
to develop, — in order to make barbarism more barbarovis, 
and to add to the want of political freedom the most dreadful 
and debasing personal suffering. Thus all the effects and in- 
fluences of freedom were employed to enslave; the gifts oi 
knowledge to prevent the possibility of illumination ; and 
powers, which could not have existed but in consequence oi 
morality and religion, to perpetuate the sensual vices, and tt) 



SLA.VB TRADE. 3 

ward off the emancipating blow of Christianity ; and, as if SECT, 
this were not enough, positive laws were added by the best v-^-^^ 
and freest nation of Christendom, and powers intrusted to 
the basest part of its population, for purposes which would 
almost necessarily make the best men become the worst." 

8. However strong these general representations, they are 
more than confirmed by the details of which the world had 
the fullest proof. It was remarked with great truth by Mr. 
William Smith in the debate of 1792, in the House of Com- 
mons, that numberless facts had been related by eye witnesses, 
to Parliament, so dreadfully atrocious, that the very magni- 
tude of the crimes rendered them incredible to others. I will 
select some of the particular features in the character of the 
trade, and a few d the single incidents, as they were related 
in Parliament, upon such evidence as no longer to admit of 
contradiction. Mr. Wilberforce said, " it was well known 
that it was customaiy to set fire to whole villages in Africa, 
for the purpose of throwing the inhabitants into confusion, 
and taking them as they fled from the flames. Every possi- 
ble fraud was put in practice to deceive the ignorance of the 
natives, by false weights and measures, adulterated commo- 
dities, and other impositions of the sort." 

" On the windward coast an agent was sent to establish a 
settlement in the interior country, and to send down to the 
ships such slaves as he might be able to obtain ; the orders he 
received from his captain were a very model of conciseness 
and perspicuity ; ' he was to encourage the chieftains, by 
brandy and gunpowder, to go to war, and make slaves.' He 
punctually performed his part, the chieftains were not back.> 
ward on theirs ; the neighbouring villages were ransacked, 
being surrounded and set on fire in the night; their inhabitants 
were seized when making their escape, and being brought to 
the agent, were by him forwarded, men, women, and chil- 
dren, to his principal on the coast. Mr. How, a botanist, 
who, in the service of government, visited that country with 
captain Thomson, gave in evidence, that being at one of the 
subordinate settlements on the Gold Coast, on the arrival of 
an order for slaves from Cape Coast Castle, the native chief 
immediately sent forth his armed pai'ties, who, in the night, 
brought in a supply of all descriptions, and the necessary as- 
sortment was next day sent off, according to the order. The 
: wide extent of the African coast furnished but one uniform 
• detail of similar instances of barbarity." 

" The exciting of wars," added the same speaker, " be- 
tween neighbouring states, is almost the slightest of the evils 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

Africa is doomed to suffer frotn this trade. Still more into- 
lerable are those acts of outrage which we are continually*, 
stimulating the kings to commit on their own subjects. A 
chieftain, to procure the articles for the gratification of ap- 
petites which we have diligently and too successfully taught 
them to indulge, being too weak or too timid to attack his 
neighbours, sends a party, of soldiers by night to one of his. 
own defenceless villages ; they set fire to it, and hurry the 
inhabitants to the ships of the traders, who, hovering like 
vultures bver these scenes of carnage, are ever ready fol* 
their prey. We are perpetually told of villages half con- 
sumed, and bearing every mark of recent destruction. Whi- 
thersoever a man goes, be it to the watering place or to the 
field, he is not safe. He can never quit his house without fear ■ 
of being carried off by fraud or by force. When the chief- 
tains are going up the country to make war in order to pro- 
cure s;aves, they are supplied with muskets and cutlasses by 
the traders." 

Mr. Pitt said on the same occasion — " Can we hesitate in 
deciding whether the wars in Africa are their wars or ours. 
It was our arms in the river Cameroon, put into the hands 
of the negro trader, that furnished him with the means of 
pushing his trade, and I have no more doubt they are Bri- 
tish arms put into the hands of Africans, which promote uni- 
versal war and desolation, than I can doubt of their having 
done so, in that individual instance." 

Mr. Wilberforce related, that in the year 1789, in the' 
neighbourhood of the river Cameroon, the master of a Liver-^ 
pool ship, of the name of Bibby, fraudulently carried off thirty- 
two relations of one of the chiefs of the country, who had been 
put on board as pledges for goods : and to illustrate the fa- 
miliarity of the practice, he quoted the following anecdote. 
" When General Rooke commanded in his majesty's settle- 
ments at Goree, some of the subjects of a neighbouring king, 
with whom he was on terms of amity, came to pay him A 
friendlv visit ; there were from 100 to 150 of them; men, wo- 
men, and children ; all was gaiety and merriment, it was a 
scene to gladden the saddest, and to soften the hardest: 
heart : but a slave captain, ever faithful to the interest of his . 
employers, is not so soon thrown off his guard; with whaft 
astonishment would the House hear, that in the midst of this ; 
festivity, it was proposed to General Rooke to seize the whole 
of this unsuspecting multitude, hurry them on board the ships, 
and carry them off to the West Indies. It was not merely one 
man, but three, who were bold enough to venture on such a 



SLAVE TUADK. 6t 

proposal. Three English slave captains preferred it as their SECT, i 
joint request, alleging the precedent of a former governor^ who '"^'^'^ 
in a similar case., had consented P'' &c. 

One more of the numberless authenticated occurrences of 
this nature, will suffice. " Mr. Wilberforce said that these 
enormities were increasing ; for, no longer ago than last Au- 
gust, (1791,) when that House was debating on the subject of 
this very trade, six British vessels had anchored off the town 
of Calabar, in Africa, a town which seemed devoted to mis- 
fortune. It appeared, from the report, that the natives had 
raised the price of slaves. The captains consulting together, 
agreed to fire on the town, to compel them to lower the price 
of their countrymen. To heighten, if possible, the shame of 
this proceeding, they were prevented for some time, froni 
effecting their purpose, by the presence of a French captain, 
who refused to join in their measures, and purchased at the 
high price which had been put upon the slaves." 

" However, in the morning they commenced a fire, which 
lasted for three hours. During the consternation, the wretch- 
ed inhabitants were seen making their escape in every direc- 
tion. In the evening, the attack was renewed, which con- 
tinued until thev agreed to sell their slaves at the price stipu- 
lated by the captains. In this attack upwards of twenty 
persons were destroyed." 

The situation of the slaves on board ship, or what is com- 
monly cd\\Q.6. the middle passage^ even surpassed in horror the 
depravity and cruelty exhibited in the original acquisition. 
Lord Grenville declared in 1806, in tlie House of Lords, 
" that in the transportation of the negroes, there was a greater 
portion of misery condensed within a smaller space, than had '\ 
ever existed in the known world. This he had said on a for- 
mer occasion, and would repeat." Mr. Fox observed, in the 
House of Commons, that " the acts of barbarit)^, proved upon 
the slave captains in the course of the voyages, were so extra- 
vagant that they had been attributed to insanit}^." The single 
instance of the British ship Zong, in 1781, from v/hich the / 
captain threw into the sea one hundred and thirty-two slaves, 
alive, in order to defraud the underwriters in England, gives a 
truly demoniac character to the temper and conduct of the 
commanders of the slave ships. The assertion of Lord Gren- 
ville, just quoted, would seem to be warranted by the facts 
which were in undeniable evidence before the committees ot 
Parliament. With respect to tiie middle passage — apart from 
the administration of the chip's officers, still more har'narous, 
than the situation v/as deplorable, — the principal features of 



3 JS.EGHO SLAVERY AN6 

^"^ ^- it are these, according to the testimony of witnesses produced 
"^'"^^ on the side of the trade. 

Every slave, whatever his size might be, had only five feet 
six inclies in length, and sixteen inches in breadth, to lie in. 
The floor was covered with bodies stowed or packed accord- 
ing to this allowance. But between the floor and the deck or 
ceiling were platforms, or broad shelves, in the midway, which 
were covered with bodies also. The height from the floor to 
the ceiling, within which space the bodies on the floor and 
those on the platforms lay, seldom exceeded five feet tw© 
inches, and in some cases it did not exceed four feet. 

The men were chained, two and two together, by their 
hands and feet, and were chained also by means of ring-bolts, 
which were fastened to the deck. They were confined in this 
manner at least all the time they remained upon the coast, 
■which was from six weeks to six months, as it might happen. 
Their allowance consisted of one pint of water a day to each 
person, and they were fed twice a day with yams and horse- 
beans. Instruments were kept on board to force them to eat, 
when sulky. 

After meals, they jumped up in their irons for exercise. 
This was so necessary for their health that they were whipped 
if they refused to do it, and often danced thus under the lash. 
They were usually fifteen or sixteen hours below deck out of. 
twenty-four. In rainy weather they could not be brought up 
for two or three days together. If the ship was full, their 
situation was then inexpressibly distressing. They drew 
their breath with anxious and laborious efforts. Thus 
crammed together, some died of suffocation, and the filth 
and noisomeness occasioned putrid and fatal disorders ; so 
that the officers who inspected them in a morning, had occa- 
sionally to pick dead slaves out of their rows, and to unchain 
their carcases from the bodies of their fellow-sufferers, to 
whom they were fastened. 

The scenes and practices in the next stage of the sacrifice, 
— the sale in the West India port, — rivalled those of the 
transportation. The slaves who survived the passage, fre- 
quently arrived in a sickly and disordered state, and then they , 
were made up for the market, by the means of astringents, 
washes, mercurial ointments, and repelling drugs, so that 
their wounds and diseases might be hid. Many people in th&i 
islands, in Jamaica particularly, were accustomed to speculate.! 
in the purchase of those who were left after the first day's 
sale. They then carried them out into the country, and re- 
tailed them there. A most respectable witness declared that, 



SLAVE TRADE. 

Ke had seen these landed in a very wretched state, sometimes SECT 
in the agonies of death, and sold as low as a dollar, and that ~ 
he had known several to expire in the piazzas of the vendue- 
Biaster. 

9. In the list of the evils and atrocities accompanying this 
trade, one of the most certain and shocking, was the extensive 
mortality, independent of that inseparable from the wars and 
devastations in Africa, to which it gave rise. We read in 
Macpherson's Annals, that the whole number of negroes de- 
livered, fell short of the number shipped, twenty or thirty per 
cent. ; that in Jamaica, if fifteen out of twenty new negroes 
bought, were alive at the end of three years, the purchaser 
was thought very lucky. We are told by the Edinburgh Re- 
view, (No. 8,) that upon an average, no less that seventeen in 
an hundred died before they were landed, and that there was 
a further loss of thirty-three in the seasoning, arising chiefly 
from diseases contracted during the voyage. " Of the Afri- 
cans," says Dr. Dickson, in his Mitigation of Slavery, " above 
one-fourth perished on the voyage to the West Indies ; and 4|- 
per cent, more, being nearly the annual mortality of London, 
died on an average, in the fortnight intervening between the 
day of entry and sale. To close this awful triumph of the king 
of terrors, between one-third and one-half, or about two in 
five were lost in " the seasoning," within the three first 
years." The representations of Mr. Wilberforce on this head 
were never invalidated, and are as follows. " It would be 
found," he said, " upon an average of all the ships, upon 
which evidence had been given, that, exclusively of such as 
perished before they sailed from Africa, iiot less than twelve 
and a half per cent, died on their passage ; besides these, the 
Jamaica report stated, that four and a half per cent, died 
while in the harbours, or on shore, before the day of sale, 
which was only about the space of twelve or fourteen days 
after their arrival there, and one-third more died in the sea- 
soning, and this in a climate exactly similar to their own, in 
which they were acknowledged to be heakhy. Thus out of 
every lot of one hundred shipped from Africa, seventeen died 
in about nine iveeks^ and not more than fiftij lived to become 
effective labourers in our islands.'''' 

Mr. Wilberforce adduced, on another occasion, upon the 
authority of indisputable evidence, some cases of particular 
mortality, of which I will transcribe his relation, because it 
brings into view additional attributes of the trade. 

" It was no longer ago than in the year 1788, that Mi*. 

Vol. I.— U u 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

^^ ^- Isaac Wilson, whose intelligent and candid manner of giving 
his evidence, could not but impress the committee with a 
high opinion of him, was doomed to witness scenes as deep- 
ly distressing as almost ever occurred in the annals of the 
slave trade." 

" His ship was a vessel of three hundred and seventy tons, 
and she had on board six hundred and two slaves, a number 
greater than we at present allow, but rather less, I think, than 
what was asserted by the slave merchants to be necessary, in 
order to carry on their trade to any tolerable profit. Out ot 
these six hundred and two she lost one hundred and fifty-five. 
I will mention the mortality also of three or four more vessels, 
which were in company with her, and belonged to the same 
owner. One of them brought four hundred and fifty, and 
buried two hundred; another brought four hundred and sixty- 
six, and buried seventy-three ; another brought five hundred 
and forty-six, and buried one hundred and eighty-eight : be- 
sides one hundred and fifty-five from his own ship, his num- 
ber being six hundred and two ; and from the whole four, 
after the landing of their cargoes, there died two hundred and 
twenty. He fell in with another vessel, which lost three 
hundred and sixty-two : the number she had brought was not 
specified. To these actual deaths, during and immediately 
after the voyage, and the subsequent loss in what is called 
the seasoning, I consider that this loss would be greater than 
ordinary in cargoes landed in so sickly a state. Why, sir, 
were such a mortality general, it would, in a few months, de- 
populate the earth. We asked the surgeon the causes of these 
excessive losses, particularly on board his own ship, where he 
had it in his power to ascertain them. The substance of his 
reply was, that most of the slaves appeared to labour under a 
fixed dejection and melancholy, interrupted now and then 
by lamentations and plaintive songs, expressive of their con- 
cern for the loss of their relations and friends, and native 
country. So powerfully did this operate, that many attempted 
various ways of destroying themselves ; some endeavoured to 
drown themselves, and three actually effected it; others obsti- 
nately refused to take sustenance, and when the whip and 
other violent means were used to compel them to eat, they 
looked up in the face of the officer, who unwillingly executed 
this painful task, and said, in their own language, ' Presently 
we shall be no more.' Their state of mind produced a ge- 
neral state of languor and debilitv, which were increased, in 
many instances, by an unconquerable abstinence from food, 
ajrising partly from sickness, partly, to use the language ,of 



SLAVE TRADE, | 

slave captains, from * sulkiness.' These causes naturally SECT 
produced the dysentery ; the contagion spread, numbers were 
daily carried off, and the disorder, aided by so many powerful 
auxiliaries, resisted all the force of medicine. 

" The ship in which Mr. Claxton, the surgeon, sailed, since 
the regulating act, afforded a repetition of all the same horrid 
circumstances I have before alluded to. Suicide, various 
ways, was attempted and effected, and the same barbarousr 
expedients were resorted to, in order to compel them to con- 
tinue an existence too painful to be endured : the mortality 
also was as great." 

10. Bryan Edwards, in his History of the West Indies,*- 
computes the total import of negroes, in British vessels, into 
all the British colonies of Amei'ica and the West Indies, from 
1680 to 1786, at 2,130,000, being on an average of the whole, 
20,095 annually. He acknowledges that this estimate " is 
much less than is commonly supposed," and that he had not 
*' sufficient materials to enable him to furnish an accurate 
statement." There can be no doubt that he is far short of the 
real number. It is calculated, as we have seen, by Ander- 
son, that the annual British export from Africa was one hun- 
dred thousand, and the annual mortality twenty thousand. 
Mr. Long confesses, in his History of Jamaica, that twenty- 
seven thousand were imported into that island in two years and 
an half; and Mr. Edwards puts down the Jamaica importa- 
tion at one-third of the whole. The Dutch colonies of De- 
merara, Guiana, and Berbice, fell into the hands of Great 
Britain in 1797 ; and immediately called for a great number 
of negroes, having been prevented from supplying themselves 
during the war. It is averred in the Edinburgh Review, 
(No. 24,) that the British slave trade then rose to fifty-seven 
thousand, and continued at that standard for eight years ; that 
is, until 1805, when the importation into the Dutch colonies 
was terminated by an order in council, to appease the jealou- 
sies and clamours in the old islands. 

Taking the data which the statements quoted in the preced- 
ing pages afford, I should not certainly transcend the mark, if I 
added ten thousand to the average of Edwards. If we state it, 
in round numbers, at thirty thousand, we shall have, for the one 
hundred and sixyears,three millions one hundred and eighteen 
thousand negroes imported into the Bi-itish possessions alone. 
But to have the whole number which Great Britain obtained 

••B.IV.C.2. 



I NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

flT I. from Africa, we must bring into the account those whom she 
procured antecedent to the j-ear 1680, and after the year 1 786 ; 
those whom she imported directly into the foreign posses- 
sions, under her contracts, and otherwise; and also, those who 
perished on her hands on the coast of Africa, and in the trans- 
portation. The aggregate ofher immediate prey musthave ex- 
ceeded six millions, and we may rate the direct mortality for 
which she is answerable, at two millions, for the century of the 
trade preceding the abolition.* If we call to mind, besides, 
the general physical suffering undergone by the survivors, be- 
fore the)'^ reached their ultimate, most calamitous lot; the men- 
tal agony implied in their divulsion from their native soil and 
the bonds of kindred and friendship ; we must stand aghast, at 
the account of crime which remained open against the British 
nation at the time of the abolition. In addition to the items 
mentioned, those are of no small moment which are suggested 
in Mr. Pitt's apostrophe to the House of Commons. " Do you 
think nothing of the ruin and the miseries in which so many 
other individuals, still remaining in Africa, are involved, in 
consequence of carrying off so many myriads of people ? Do 
you think nothing of their families which are left behind ; of 
the connexions which are broken ; of the friendships, attach- 
ments, and relationships that are burst asunder ? Do you think 
nothing of the miseries, in consequence, that are felt from 
generation to generation, of the privation of that happiness 
which might be communicated to them by the introduction 
of civilization, and of mental and moral improvement ?" 

From the foregoing exposition, it may be asserted, with 
confidence, that the British slave trade caused immediately, 
during the two centuries of its legal prosecution, the destruc- 
tion of more negroes than have existed, altogether, in North 
America, since the first settlement. The leaders of the abo- 
lition, the Pitts, the Foxes, the Horsleys, did not hesitate to 
bestow upon that destruction the most fearful of epithets. 
*' What is it," exclaimed Lord Grenville, " but murder to 



* This is much below the calculations of her own writers. " The num-i 
ber," says one of these, " of slaves which the ships profess to take is not an' 
exact criterion of the number actually taken. The public number does not 
include the quota, allowed to the respective officei-s of the ship ; nor do the 
owners confine themselves to any exact number, if, on the arrival of the 
ship in Africa, the commodity is cheaper than they expected." For obvi- 
ous reasons, the mortality of the negroes in the transportation would not be 
disclosed in all its extent. The number smuggled by the British into the 
Spanish possessions, while they enjoyed the assiento, was not inconsiUer* 
able. 



SLAVE TRADE. | 

pursue a. practice which produced annually untimely death to SECT, 
thousands of innocent and helpless beings !" Now, I would "^^^"^ 
ask, which it is, the Briton or the American, that can, with 
most propriety, be stigmatized, nationally, as " a murderer 
of slaves ?" 

If we admitted as true all that the British writers have re- 
lated of the condition and treatment of the slaves in this 
country, we could yet defy them to make out an amount of 
injustice, and suffering, and cruelty, in any way equal to that 
which the}' have charged and proved upon their African trade. 
In portentous individual instances of inhuman conduct, whe- 
ther as to enormity or multitude, that trade far outstrips the 
North American negro slaverA'; the history of which presents, 
indeed, no authenticated case of barbarity which does not ap- 
pear almost venial, in thecomparison with the monstrous pro- 
ceedings consigned in the parliamentary minutes of evidence. 

11. The thirst of gain and the ambition of commercial su- 
premacy, which engaged and animated the British people and 
government in this detestable traffic, inspired them with the 
aim of monopolizing every market for human flesh. The 
cargo of negroes was carried with equal readiness to Caraccas 
or to Jamaica, to Pennsylvania or to Guiana. No discrimi- 
nation was made as to the character of the masters to whose 
absolute will they were to be consigned, or to the nature of 
the climate or the toil which they were to undergo. The 
French and the Spaniards had, like ourselves, their full shai-e 
of obloquy from the English traveller, on account of the seve- 
rity of their rule over the very slaves whom the English tra- 
der sold to them ; and the French and Spanish character 
stood degraded, on the same account, in elaborate contrasts 
with the British, when the French and Spanish ports were 
crowded with British slave ships, and the British ministers 
struggling for the prolongation of the Assiento-contract. 

Doubtless, Great Britain was answerable for the fate of the 
whole number of beings whom she delivered over to perpe- 
tual bondage in this hemisphere ; knowing the temper and 
habits of the Spanish and French planters, she partook in the 
guilt of their excesses of cruelty towards the slaves whom 
they had received from her ships. In the case of the slavery 
in her own islands she was more than an accessary ; and it 
could not be surpassed in hardship and inhumanity. That 
in the American Provinces was universally acknowledged to 
be much more mild. While every where in the latter, 



i NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

l^T L there was an excess of births over deaths among the ne- 
^'"^"^ groes, and in some, a rapidity of increase; in the British 
West Indies, the whole stock requii-ed renewal in less than 
fifteen years.* 

I had intended to copy from the parliamentary statements 
some of the facts illustrative of this additional waste of the 
human species, and of the condition and treatment of the 
negroes, under British dominion ; but I have already dealt 
3n details of this nature, as much as is compatible with my 
limits, and the tenderness due to the feelings of my readers. 
It is enough to refer to the debates in the British parliament 
on the abolition, and on the slave registry bills. The tone 
of the British writers has often been such on these subjects, 
as if they considered the conscience of England clear with 
respect to the slave trade and to slavery, because these were 
imknown in her own immediate territory. This miserable 
casuistry was noticed in Parliament in the year 1792, in the 
following pointed and just remarks. 

" Mr. Robert Thornton said, — the people of England were 
called a humane set of people. Liberty was the boast of our 
island ; and it was said that no African was landed on our 
soil, who did not instantly become free. They were guilty, 
however, of a contradiction, as long as they sent those misera- 
ble wretches elsewhere into slavery j they were governed by 
Ji selfish principle ; they could send these wretches out of 
their sight to be vilified, and disgraced, and, scourged, but 
they did not themselves like to witness their cries, their tears, 
and all their degradation. He recollected an old motto, 
* Qui facit per alium, facit per se.' " 

Neither the Parliament nor nation could, at any time, plead 
ignorance of the character of the trade, and of West India 
slavery. The collections of early voyages ; the reports of tra- 



* " According to Sii* Isaac Newton," says Dr. Dickson, " mankind die ofF, 
and are renewed every tliirty-three or thirty-four years. But the slaves col- 
leclively, bought and bred, die off, and are renewed, in about fifteen years; 
and therefore more than twice as fast as the rest of the species; and the 
bought alone more than four or Jive thnes as fast." When the whole number 
of slaves in the Bi'ilish West India Islands was computed at 265,666, the an- 
mial consumption of them was estimated at 23,743, Mr. Malthus remarks ia 
the Appendix to his Essaj^ on Population, that if the slaves in the West In- 
dies had been only in a tolerable condition; if their civil condition and moral 
habits had been made only to approirch to those which prevail among the 
-mass of the human race in the worst governed countries in the world, it is 
contrary to the general laws of nature to suppose, that they would not have 
been able by procreation fully to supply the effective demand for labour. 



SLAVE TRADE. . 

vellers ,•" the mutual, printed accusations of the Royal Afri-SE,CT 
can Company, and the private adventurers ; the inevitable 
notoriety of facts where considerable cities were almost en- 
tirely devoted to the traffic ; the constant intercourse with the 
West Indies, through all ranks of life ; the solemn admoni- 
tions of the writers whom Clarkson has cited ; the insurance 
eases which were brought into the courts of justice ; preclude 
the charitable supposition that mercy, and justice, and 
honour were unconsciously trampled upon in the race of com- 
mercial competition. Mr. Wilberforce, after displaying, 
in bis speech of 1792, the enormities of which I have men- 
tioned a small part, added, " nor do we learn these transac- 
tions only from our own witnesses ; they are proved by the 
testimony of slave-factors themselves, whose works were 
written and published long before the present enquiry." 
< I have observed that, until the year 1786, no society was 
formed among any description of persons in England, which 
had for its object the abolition of the trade. The callousness 
of the government too is almost inconceivable, Clarkson re- 
lates that Granville Sharp communicated all the facts of the 
hideous case of captain Zong, with a copy of the trial to the 
Lords of the Admiralty, as the guardians of justice upon the 
seas, and to the duke of Portland, as principal minister of 
state ; but that no notice was taken by any of them, of the 
information thus imparted. When the Quakers presented, in 
1783, their petition to Parliament against the slave trade, — 
the first of that purport ever presented, — Lord North ad- 
mitted, in the House of Commons, the grievousness of the 
evil, and only "• regretted that the trade against which the 
"petition was so justly directed, was, in a commercial view 
become necessary to almost every nation in Europe." In 
1776, the estimable David Hartley, after exposing to the 
House of Commons, the abominations of the slave trade, and 
laying on the table of the House some of the fetters and other 
instruments of torture employed on board of the slave ships, 
moved "that the slave trade was contrary to the laws of 
God and the rights of man." This motion was seconded by 
the patriot and philanthropist, Sir George Saville, who lives 
so brilliantly in the splendid eulogy of Burke ; and yet it failed 
utterly. The proceeclings of the Commons the year following, 
(1777,) on the state of the African Company, are remarkable 
on account of the tone which prevailed in the discussion. 
It was such, as if the trade were not only unimpeached, but 
Unimpeachable. Nothing betrayed the business to be con- 
sidered in any other light than as an ordinary one, except. 



t NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

T^i' I- perhaps, the folloAving remarks of Mr. Temple Luttrell, who 
"^""^^ had the charge of unfolding the case of the Company and the 
interests of the trade. "• Some gentlemen may, indeed, ob- 
ject to the slave trade as inhuman and impious, but, hard as 
the case of a negro slave may appear to a free born Briton at 
first view, I conceive him to be far less an object of comiaii- 
seration, (his native state and local birthright being taken into 
the comparison,) than a poor impressed sailor within this 
island," &c. Another extract from the speech of Mr. Lut- 
trell, which passed without animadversion, will show the pre- 
vailing temper and policy on the subject; — how coollv and 
nicely the comparative value of human flesh was calculated 
in an assemblv of *■' free born Britons." 

" In the slave ti-ade also, there might be prodigious im- 
provements ; but the attention of the Board of Trade and 
Plantations in this matter has been too much limited ; the ne- 
groes from the Gold Coast suit our West India islands remark- 
abh^ well ; they are laborious, bold, hardy, and live upon little 
besides salt fish and roots^ which they meet with in Jamaica. 
The negroes from Congo, Angola, and the lower Guinea, are 
of a more soft, voluptuous, and efteminate nature, and their 
women chiefly till the ground ; so that upon being transplant- 
ed to the hardsiiips of oar sugar colonies, they commit suicide 
rather than endure them : hence it is thatone Gold Coast negro 
is worth, for sugar plantations, two of the others; but in North 
America^ xvhere they meet with food and entertainment^ and 
usage better adapted to their habits^ they do perfectly xvelL''^ 

12. At length, in 1787, through the indefatigable exertions 
of a few humane individuals in the middle ranks of life, the 
enormities of the slave system, in all its stages, were forced 
upon the attention of the government and nation. A member 
of parliament of great personal consideration, took up the 
subject of abolition with the zeal of an apostle, and the reso- 
lution of a martyr. He announced his intention to summon 
the government to the performance of its duty ; and at once a, 
din of protestation and fierce defiance arose from every quar- 
/ ter. The slave trade, says Clarkson, " appeared, like the fabu-. 
I lous hydra, to have a hundred heads; the merchant, the plan- 
' ter, the mortgagee, the manufacturer, the politician, the legis- 
lator, the cabinet minister, lifted up their voices against its 
annihilation." The humanit)- and patriotism of Mr. Pitt, Mr. 
Fox, and of some other distinguished orators of parliament, 
were, however, enlisted with Wilberforce ; and no inconsider- 
able number of auxiliaries had been gained throughout the*: 



SLAVE TRADE. 

country, by the diffusion of the tracts of Benezet, Sharp, and SECl 
Clarkson ; of pathetic songs, and moving pictures, and what- ""^^^ 
ever could vivify public feeling and excite national shame. 
Among the higher classes, little real progress would seem to 
have been made ; since, according to Clarkson, most of the 
persons of rank and fortune in the west end of the metropolis, 
were converts to a pamphlet from the pen of a Liverpool 
champion, entitled, " Scriptural Researches on the Licitness 
of the Slave Trade," in which the holiness of the trade was 
stoutly maintained. 

In 1788, when a sufficiently marked excitement had been 
produced in the country, and the imposing shape of evidence 
before the privy council given to facts, a bill was brought into 
the House of Commons for the mere regulation of the trade, 
i so as to diminish the miseries of the middle passage. At this 
day, it is scarcely credible what resistance was made, both in 
doors and out, to this bill, which common humanity seemed 
to exact ; what dilution it underwent in its progress ; and how 
narroAvly it escaped extinction, notwithstanding the earnest 
support of the minister, and a phalanx of the ablest rhetori- 
cians who have ever existed. It was bandied several times 
in new forms, between the two houses, and at length passed 
I the Lords, through an ordeal, says Clarkson, as it were, of 
fire. He adds, that it was " the first bill which ever put fetters 
upon the destructive monster — the slave trade;" but the fact 
soon transpired, that it missed its aim, and was interpreted by 
the slave merchants into an additional charter, or recognition 
of their pursuit as a lawful branch of commerce. 

In 1789, Mr. Wilberforce ventured to lay upon the table 

of the House of Commons, as subjects for future discussion, 

twelve historical propositions founded upon the evidence in 

the case of the slave trade, reported by the privy council. 

Matters were not ripe for the proposal of abolition to parlia- 

; ment, until 1791, when Mr. Wilberforce made his first grand 

: motion to that effect. After a vehement and protracted debate, 

in which the leaders of the cause exerted their utmost ability, 

it was lost by a considerable majority. For the opinion to be 

entertained of this result, I need only refer to the language of 

,1 ' Mr. Fox and the Edinburgh Review. Mr. Fox said, in the de- 

,1 bate, that" the trade was defensible upon no other ground than 

: that of a highwayman ; and that if the house, knowing as they 

did by the evidence, what it was, did notb)- their vote, mark to 

all mankind their abhorrence of a practice so savage, so enor- 

. mous, so repugnant to all laws human and divine, they would 

consign their character to eternal infamv." The Edinburgh 

Vol. I.— X X 

k 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

Review has told us, that " the question of the slave trade 
was always one in which interest, or an apprehension of in- 
terest, stood more daringly and nakedly opposed to humanity 
and justice, than any other on record." Certainly, never was 
a question of such awful import, so treated as this was, by 
the numerous advocates of the slave trade in Parliament. 
/ On the occasion just mentioned, Mr. Grosvenor said, " that 
gentlemen had exhibited a great deal of eloquence in ex- 
I hibiting in horrid colours, the traffic in slaves. He acknow- 
( ledged it was not an amiable trade ; but neither was the trade 
\ of a butcher an amiable trade ; and yet a mutton chop was^ 
\ nevertheless^ a good thing.''''* 

\ Another and equally strenuous effort was made, the ensu- 
ing year, in the House of Commons, by the abolitionists. 
The house rejected the proposition of Mr. Wilberforce, but 
manifested a disposition to vote a gradual abolition. So much, 
after the admissions extortedbythe testimony, from the lead- 
ers of the majority, and with the prospect of an effervescence 
of public sentiment from the cogent arguments and eloquent 
pictures of the speakers in the affirmative, could not, in 
decency or policy, be refused. Mr. Pitt, who, on this occa- 
sion, put forth all the energies and beauties of his unrivalled 
oratory, afterwards expressed himself in his place, in these 
terms : " I feel the infamy of the trade so heavily, and see thie 
impolicy of it so clearly, that I am ashamed I have not been 
able to convince the house to abandon it altogether at an in- 
stant — to pronounce with one voice the immediate and total 
abolition^ There is no excuse for us, seeing this infernal 
traffic as we do. It is the very death of justice to utter a 
syllable in support of it." 

Mr. Dundas, one of the antagonists of immediate abolition, 
in a short time, brought in a bill for a gradual one, with some 
singular additions. He proposed that, for the futme, none 
but young persons should be allowed to be taken from Africa, , 
and that a bounty should be given upon the importation of 
young negresses into the West Indies. On this latter point, 
Mr. Fox, in his overwhelming answer to Mr. Dundas, bore 
with particular severity. *' A right honourable gentleman 
proposes a bounty on the importation of females, or in other 

• In the final debate in the House of Lords, in 1807, Earl St. Vincent I 
said, " He was sui-prised at the proposition of abolition before the house, _ 
and considering the high character and intelligence of the noble proposer, 
Lord Grenville, he declared he could account in no other way for his having ; 
brought it forward, but by supposing that some Obiman had cast his spell 
upon him!" {Alau^h.) 



SLAVE TRADE. 

Vrords,Tie proposes to make up the deficiency in the propor' SECl 
tion of sexes, by offering a premium to any crew of unprin- 
cipled and savage ruffians, who will attack and carry off any 
of the females of Africa ! a bounty from the parliament of 
Great Britain., that shall make the fortune of any man, or set 
of men, who shall kidnap or steal any unfortunate females 
from that continent ! who shall bring them over as slaves, in 
order that they may be used for breeding slaves !" In the 
course of the debate, Mr. Dundas declared, that these United 
States would, if Great Britain abandoned the slave trade, 
purvey for the West Indies ; and he added — " Is it to be ima- 
gined that the Americans are so favourably disposed towards 
this country, as to resist the temptation of forming so valuable 
a connexion with our colonies ? A connexion once begun by 
supplying them with negroes would not end there ; and we 
viight lose the West Indies without accomplishing our object.''^ 

Mr. Fox replied, that he was not so much alarmed by the 
possibility of the British Islands getting into habits of intimacy 
with foreigners. Though the apprehension of Mr. Dundas 
concerning our assumption of the British slave trade has, no 
(doubt, vanished from the minds of his successors in office, we 
may suspect, that the alarm at the possible consequences of an 
intimacy between these States and the West Indies, is one of 
the motives of the present rigorous system of commercial ex- 
clusion. 

The Commons voted a gradual abolition, and the Lords 
Refused to concur. The next year, 1793, the former refused 
\o renew their vote, and rejected amotion of Mr. Wilberforce, 
to abolish that part of the British trade, by which the British 
merchants supplied foreigners with slaves. This motion, how- 
ever, being revived in 1794, was finally carried in a very 
thin house ; but lost with the Peers by a majority of forty-five 
to four. I need not recite the annual and fruitless attempts of 
the abolitionists between this period and the year 1807, when 
they finally succeeded. The degree of merit for the interv^al, 
to which the Parliament and nation are entitled, may be col- 
lected from the following passage of the Edinburgh Review.* 

" The vast and general sensation produced by the first de- 
velopment of the horrible traffic in human flesh, speedily 
gave place to a much more sober and partial sentiment of re- 
probation ; no small difficulty was experienced in attracting 
the attention of the public to the discussion for many years ; 
it was pretty uniformly debated among empty benches^ in those 
august assemblies., whose walls can scarce contain their crowds^ 

• No. 47. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



xvlien a person of honour is to be attacked^ or a female of easy vir- 



tue is to &"eve evidence.'''' 



6 



The degree of success obtained at any time with the pub- 
lic, and the final triumph of the question, were owing in no 
small measure to considerations of expediency. It was found 
important to give quite as extensive a circulation to Clarkson's 
Essay on the Impolicif of the 'Slave Trade, as to the pam- 
phlets on its criminality, and the abstracts of the evidence re- 
specting its unparalleled barbarities. In Parliament, the 
abolitionists laboured mainly to prove, that instead of being 
advantageous to Great Britain, it was most destructive to her 
interests; was the ruin of her seamen; prevented the extension 
of her manufactures ; was no longer necessary for the mainte- 
nance of the due number of labourers in the West Indies ; 
that a much more lucrative intercourse with Africa might be 
substituted for it ; that the other powers of the world would 
either relinquish it, or be unable to carry it on, so that all 
xvoiild remain upon a footing., &c. Mr. Wilberforce, in his 
first speech, admitting, for argument's sake, that " the rivals 
of Britain, the French," might take it up, asked '' Would they 
not then be obliged to come to us, in consequence of the 
cheapness of our manufactures, for what they wanted for the 
African market?" We find the Edinburgh Reviewers rebuking 
the great abolitionist, in their 47th number, for talking, in 
his printed letter to M. Talleyrand, of the great sacrifice 
which England had made in the abolition, after he and all 
his coadjutors had uniformly, and so efficaciously pleaded the 
mischievousness of the traffic to her, whether as a nursery for 
seamen, or a channel for the employment of capital. 

In the final debate of 1807, on the abolition, Mr. Whit- 
bread, one of its most zealous advocates, said " It was com- 
plained that too much feeling and too much passion had been 
carried into this discussion. He complained on the contrary, 
that it had been made too little a question of feeling, and that 
it had been made almost entireli/ a matter of cold calculations 
of profit and loss between English money and African blood." 
Lord Castlereagh, indeed, did, in his first interview with the 
emperor of Russia, on the subject of genei-al abolition, expa- 
tiate upon what the British parliament had done in spite of the 
suggestions of national interest ;^ but, in the general confer- 
ences on the same subject, at Vienna, "lord Castlereagh," says 
the protocol of the sitting of 20th January, 1815, " communi- 

• See Letter of Lord Castlereagh to Earl Bathurst, dated Vienna, Januarj 
2^il, 1815, among the papers laid before Parhament, April, 1815. 



SLAVE TKADE. g 

cated authentic documents to prove that in the affair in ques- SECT; 
tion, the interest of the powers of Europe went hand in hand 
with their duty ; that the abolition was particularly for the 
real advantage, and even indispensable for the security, of 
the colonial countries," &;c.* 

On all hands, there must be an immediate concurrence in 
the general allegation of the Edinburgh Review, that " for 
the long space of twenty years, Mr. Pitt could persuade about 
three'-fourths of the members of Parliament to adopt any 
scheme of finance, or of external policy which he chose to 
countenance, but did never once prevail against the slave tra- 
ders and consignees of sugar in Bristol and Liverpool."! 
The Reviewers have made this failure, considered in con- 
nexion with the prompt success of the Fox administration, 
the ground of a most atrocious charge against the memory 
of Mr. Pitt — that he was not sincere in the cause of abolition, 
as a minister, although he might have been as a man. The 
distinction would not save him, if this were true, from being 
regarded as the vilest of hypocrites, nor the genius of the 
British government from appearing as the most entirely ar- 
tificial and selfish ever known. The strain of Mr. Pitt's 
speeches absolves him, however ; and Clarkson has borne the 
strongest testimony to his good faith. His colleagues in the 
ministry, particularly the lord chancellor, Thurlow, exerted 
themselves indefatigably, in opposition to the measure, and 
weakened the impression of his station. The stigma does 
not attach to him, but to the Parliament, if he could inake a 
majority in such a case; if he could bring them to act pro- 
perly on a question the most important for humanit^^, and the 
reputation of the British name, only by using his influence 
as minister ; that is, as the head of a party, and the dispenser 
of place and patronage. There is another question which 
neither Mr. Pitt nor Mr. Fox could have carried through 
both houses of Parliament, even as ministers — that of catho- 
■ lie emancipation; and the reader will remark that it is alone 
on two points of this description, in which the freedom of 
millions was involved, ministerial influence has been found 
ineffectual in the British legislature. 

In the course of the present parliamentary session, (1819,) 
Mr. William Smith of Norwich — to whom the cause of abo- 
lition is as much indebted as to any other parliamentary ad- 
vocate, except Mr. Wilberforce — stated to the House of Com- 
mons, that even at last, in 1807, after the twenty'years discus- 

* Pieces Officielles dc Schoell. vol. vli. \ No. 24. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

r I. sion, it required all the efforts of almost every member of that 
"^-^ house, who had any title to the character of an orator or a 
statesman, to carry the act through the Parliament. In fact, 
in the final debates, the justice and humanity of the trade were 
maintained as boldly as they ever had been ; arguments of 
counsel were heard at the bar, and petitions received, against 
the abolition ; Lord Castlereagh, Lord Sidmouth, Lord 
Hawkesbury, Lord Eldon, Lord Westmoreland, Mr. Rose, 
Mr. Bathurst, spoke in opposition. These were the men who, 
immediately after the abolition became a law, took the place 
of its patrons in the government. Clarkson remarks, that 
though the bill had now passed both houses, " there was an 
awful fear lest it should not receive the royal assent, before 
the Grenville ministry was dissolved." This awful fear was 
founded upon the conviction that, with a ministry adverse to 
the measure, no parliament could be found to adopt it at the 
instigation of a member out of office. There is nothing, 
therefore, forced, or illiberal, in the conclusion, that it was 
a general party movement ; an act of subserviency in the 
old routine to the will of an administration firmly united and 
inextricably entangled in the object; that, had that ministry 
been dissolved before the royal assent was given, the slave 
traffic would be at this day a lawful branch of British com- 
merce.* As the case was, seventeen years had elapsed since 
superabundant, irrefragable evidence of the history and cha- 
racter of the traffic was officially before Parliament: within 
that interval it had been allowed to flourish on an enlarged 
scale. Sir Samuel Romilly told the House of Commons, in 
1806, that " since the year 1796, no less than three hundred 
and sixty thousand Africans had been torn away, under the 
continued sanction of Parliament, from their native land." 
This estimate is certainly too low, for the annual exportation 
of the British, according to the Edinburgh Review, rose to 
57,000, after the acquisition of the Dutch colonies in 1797. 
The Report of the African Institution for the present year, 

* The following extract from the debate of the House of Commons of 
June 27th, 1814, will shew that I am not alone in this conjecture. 
"Ml-. Philips said — 

" I cannot forget that tlie public voice had been raised even more loudly 
against the slave trade before the administration of Mr. Fox, than during its 
brief existence ; and to such a degree do I think the gratitude of the friends 
of justice and humanity due to that short-lived and much misrepresented ad- 
ministration, that I do in mii conscience believe, but for them, the British slave 
trade -wonld at this inoment have been continued to the disgrace of the country, to 
the outrage of public feeling, and in violution of evenj pi-inciple of policy, justice, 
■and humanitij." 



SLAVE TRADE. 

(1819,) states the average at 55,000, and admits that the num- SECl 
her taken from Africa in 1806 and 1807, in the prospect 0/^-^^ 
the approaching abolition of the trade ^ ivas very considerable. 
From the period when Mr. Pitt declared to Parliament that 
they had examined sufficiently into the nature of the trade to 
enable them to decide, and must be convinced of its cruelty 
and injustice, until the date of the cessation of importation 
into the British colonies, the number of negroes carried into 
slavery by the British merchants with the authority of the 
nation, could not have been less than one-third of the whole 
number now existing in the United States, 

13. My readers may already understand, that the British 
abolition is not quite so abundantly creditable, as to render it 
an adequate foundation for reflections on the United States. 
But I will suppose that the motives were altogether pure 
and magnanimous ; that it was the immediate fruit of Chris- 
tian conviction ; — a national act of contrition and atonement. 
The questions then arise, — was it in itself a sufficient repara- 
tion for the wrongs done to Africa ? and if not, has Great 
Britain performed her utmost to make full amends ? The ad- 
vocates of the abolition admitted, universally, what all must 
perceive, that by it she had merely stopped the increase of 
her vast debt to that continent and to humanity ; that she was 
bound to go further ; to rectify the condition of the negroes ^ 
within her dominions, and, if possible, to withdraw all the 
other nations from the slave trade. Every one saw that un- 
less her example were imitated by the slave-dealing powers 
of Europe, her proceeding, however useful to her own com- 
merce and character, would be productive, comparatively, of 
little advantage to Africa, and followed by an extensive 
clandestine trade in her own dependencies. 

Reviewing the statements of those who brought about the 
abolition, respecting the immensity of the crime she had com- 
mitted, and the misery and mischief she had caused ; and, on 
the other hand, the estimates made by the anti-abolitionists, of 
the vast emolument and general advantages which she had 
gained in the prosecution of the trade, closet-moralists thought 
it incumbent upon her, to interpose her whole strength in fa- 
vour of the region she had so long desolated, and of the portion 
of its oflfspring within the limits of her empire, in any way that 
might be found necessary to give efficacy to her intervention, 
and at any risk. For the sake of an addition to her revenue, she 
had hazarded and incurred the loss of thirteen flourishing co- 
lonies ; for the acquisition of slips of territory in America, and 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

I. of sugar islands filled with black slaves, — for points of honour 
«*• and maritime prerogative ; for security from possible dangers, 
— she had waged long and destructive wars. She might, then, 
to make her atonement for the enormity and havoc of the slave 
trade, in some degree commensurate withher guilt — to prevent 
the contiimance of a svstem subversive of the law of nations, 
and of the principles of Christianity; superlatively baneful 
and immoral, — she might, if no other means would suffice, un- 
sheath her sword, and be assured in so doing of the favour of 
the God of battles, and of all the friends of humanity and jus- 
tice on earth. On such an occasion it became her, when con- 
vinced of the futility of every other expedient, to exert her 
maritime superiority, regardless of all forms and obstacles — 
a course of proceeding not without precedent in her history. 

At the period of her abolition, France and Spain being at 
war with her, had long been cut off from the trade. The 
only power engaged in the prosecution of it, was Portugal, 
Avhose government depended upon her for its existence. 
Scarcely a year elapsed, when Spain returned to a state of 
amity with her, under such circumstances, as rendered it 
impossible she should be refused any boon she might be 
pleased to ask. But I will leave it to an English writer to 
explain the nature of the conjuncture, and to state the result. 
I find the following exposition in a remarkable work publish- 
ed the last year, (1818,) in London, and entitled, " A View of 
the present Increase of the Slave Trade, by Robert Thorpe, 
L. L. D. late Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, and Judge of the 
Vice Admiralty Court in that Colonj^" 

"■ At the moment England abolished the slave trade, all Eu- 
rope was most favourably circumstanced to ensure an univer- 
sal abolition. The royal family of Spain threw themselves 
into the arms of France, and were handed to a prison. The 
royal family of Portugal sought the protection of England, and 
were safely conveyed to their Brasil dominions. We only 
wanted the co-operation of these powers to establish a perfect 
abolition ; we upheld them as kingdoms ; we had a right to 
insist on their abolishing the slave trade; every principle of 
justice and humanity called for such a demand, while the po- 
licy and professions of this nation, should have made compli- 
ance necessary. Such a requisition could not have been con- 
sidered as interfering with the independence of those govern- 
ments, nor with the rights of their subjects. Independence is 
■not comprised iii a power to enslave^ nor do the lawfid rights of 
any people consist in their ability to invade the natural rights of 
man. While England was exhausting her blood and treasure 



SLAVE TRADE, 3^ 

in defence of the liberty of Spain and Portugal, she was not SECT, i 
warrantable in diminishing the resources of her wealth, to ex- v-^^v-s 
tend the cruelty of their commerce ; but the most fortunate 
coincidence was criminally neglected."* 

Nothingcanbemorejustthan all this representation. Every 
one acquainted with the history of the era of Bonaparte's 
invasion of the Peninsula, must be convinced, that it was in 
the power of England, to extort from Portugal and Spain the 
abolition of their slave trade. "It would have been," said 
Mr. Canning, palliating the omission in the House of Com- 
mons, " umvise to have taken a high tone with them in the day 
of their distress ; a strong remonstrance on this subject would 
have gone with too much of authority, and have appeared in- 
sulting."! So fastidious a delicacy, where the object was, 
according to the British theory, of immeasurable importance 
to the repose of the national conscience, and to humanity ! 
The day of the absolute dependence of those powers upon 
England, Avas the only day, in which there was any likelihood 
of the accomplishment of that object with them ; and a strong' 
remonstrance against the prosecution of a system so exorbi- 
tantly wicked and pernicious, could not in itself have worn the 
air of insult, but would rather have appeared an act of noble 
friendship and resolute philanthropy. With the lives and 
happiness of millions of Africans, and all the other momen- 
tous considerations attached to the extinguishment of the 
slave trade, at stake, the opportunity was to be improved 
determinately, though at a greater cost than a little violence 
done to perverted feelings, and the excitement of an impo- 
tent discontent. If Spain and Portugal could be induced to 
comply at once, then, as no lawful trade in slaves would exist 
during the war. Great Britain ruling the seas and exercising 
the belligerent right of search, might repress all illicit trade, 
and take much more effectual precautions against its revival 
in any shape. In this point of view the opportunity seemed 
doubly precious, and irretrievable. 

The coincidence was, to repeat the language of Dr, Thorpe, 
*' criminally neglected." The British abolition took the cha- 
racter of a division of the British share of the trade between 
foreign powers, and a number of British subjects upon whom 
the act of Parliament would not serve as a restraint. The- 
anti-abolitionists predicted this, and contributed to the fulfil- 
ment of the prediction. Portugal was left at liberty to supply 
not only her own dependencies, but those of Spain ; and to the 

* Page 24. f Debate on the Treaty of 1814. 

Vol.. I.—Y y 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

latter, cargoes were incessantly carried under the Portuguese 
' flag, until at length the British cruizers were authorized to 
bring in for adjudication, such Portuguese ships as might be 
found carrying slaves, to places not subject to the crown of 
Portugal, It was discovered, within the year after the ter- 
mination by law of the British exportation, that the tradc' 
itself had not suffered the least abatement ; but, on the con- 
trary, was plied with greater activity, to a greater extent, and 
with aggravated barbarity, under the Spanish, Swedish, and 
Portuguese flags. " The slave trade," says the Report, dated 
1810, of the commissioners of African inquiry, " is at pre- 
sent carried on to a vast extent. By the autumn of 1809, , 
the coast of Africa swarmed with contraband vessels ; and it 
was not until the arrival of a small squadron of his majesty's ■ 
vessels, early the next year, (1810 !) that any interruption r 
could be given to their proceedings." In 1810, Great Britain i 
concluded a treaty with Portugal, by which she secured to i 
herself great commercial advantages, and consented that Por- 
tugal should carry on the trade in slaves from the African i 
dominions (claimed or in possession) of the Portuguese ; 
crown, precisely the great marts of the trade — Portugal an- 
nouncing, at the same time, with what sincerity, will sooni 
be seen, her resolution to co-operate with his Britannic ma- 
jesty in the cause of humanity and justice, &c. 

To display the efficacy of the British abolition for the first I 
years, I will here make a few extracts from the Reports off 
the London African Institution — a society which boasts off 
the most illustrious names, and is the centre of informatioai 
respecting African affairs. 

" Circumstances," says the Report of 1809, "have come; 
to the knowledge of the directors of this institution, which i 
leave them no room to doubt that means are at this moment! 
employed by persons formerly engaged in the slave trade;- 
for eluding the salutary provisions of the abolition act, and! 
perpetuating the guilt and misery of that traffic." 

" No foreign states," says the Report of 1810, " have hi- 
therto followed the example set them by the legislatures of 
Great Britain and the United States of America. The flags of 
Spain and of Sweden have of late been extensively employed; 
in covering and protecting a trade in slaves. Nor is this alUl 
It has been discovered that, in defiance of all the penalties 
imposed by act of Parliament, vessels under foreign flag*; 
have been- fitted out hi the ports of Liverpool and London^ fot 
the purpose of tarrying slaves from the coast of Africa to the 
Spanish and Portuguese settlements in America. Some earn 



SfaWE TRADE. 3^ 

goes from that coast have been landed at St. Bartholomews, sect. I 
and smuggled thence into English islands. The discovery of ^i^~>^ 
one transaction has likewise discovered to the directors facts, ' 
which tend to implicate persons of some consideration in so- 
ciety, in the guilt of these and similai- practices." j 

" On the coast of Africa," says the Report of 1811, " the i 
same melancholy scene has been exhibited during the last j 
year, which the directors had the pain of describing in their ' 
former report. The coast has swarmed with slave ships, > 
chiefly under Portuguese and Spanish colours, &c. Suffice it j 
to say, that accounts from various quarters concur with certain 
judicial proceedings which have taken place in this country, 
to prove, that a very considerable trade in slaves has been car- 
ried on of late, ?[.v\6. a large portion of it by means of the capital \ 
and credit of British siibjects.^^** After the length to which '' 
the report has already run, the directors are unwilling to enter ' 
into minute details, with regard to the means which have been 
practised in the West Indies, to elude the laws prohibiting 
the importation of slaves. Suffice it to say, that they have re- 
ceived information which satisfies them that those laws have ' 
been grossly, and in some instances openly violated, by the 
importation of slaves, to a considerable extent^ into our own \ 
West India colonies." 

" There is a large class of contraband slave ships fitted i 

out chiefly from London or Liverpool, destined in fact to the ! 

coast of Africa," &c. \ 

" The representations," says the Report of 1812, *' which ^ 

the directors made in their last report, of the extent to which J 

the slave trade had revived on the coast of Africa, appear to \ 

have fallen short of the truth. The result of the intelligence ^ 

which they have since received is, that, during the year 1810, ; 
no less than from 70 to 80,000 Africans were transported as 

slaves from the western coast of Africa to the opposite shores , 

of the Atlantic. The greatest proportion is either a British \ 

-or an American trade, conducted under the flags of Spain and i 

Portugal." A 

" What," says the Report of 1813, " has been represented j 

i as a bona fide Spanish and Portuguese slave trade, has turned \ 

I out, upon strict examination, to be, in many instances, a trade > 

in slaves, illegally carried on by British capital and British } 

subjects^ and in some instances by American subjects." ■^, 

" The directors have to bring before the general meeting a j 

new species of slave trade, carried on, it should seem, between i 

Egypt and the island of Malta. They have received informa- j 

tion on which they are disposed to rely, stating that several : 



(5 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

^RT I. slaves have been brought from Alexandria to that island, and 
""^'''^»' there sold to Englishmen^ as well as to Maltese inhabitants. 
These poor creatures consist principally of negro children, 
brought from countries bordering on the upper Nile," &c. 

" It is with extreme regret that the directors are again 
obliged to state the want of success which has attended their 
repeated, earnest, and urgent representations to government 
respecting the slave trade, carried on by means of the Por- 
tuguese island of Bissao," &c. 

" The condition of the slaves, in the new British conquests, 
the Isles of France and Bourbon, is wretched in the extreme. 
It is with feelings of deep regret that the directors, in pro- 
ceeding to advert to the condition of slaves in the West In- 
dies, express their belief that most flagrant abuses continue to 
exist in the administration of the law, as far as regards those 
unhappy beings, if, indeed, they can be said to be under the 
protection of any law." 

" The directors cannot close their observatioiis on the state 
of Africa, without adverting to the exportation of arms and 
gunpowder to that continent. It is well known that before the 
passing of the act for the abolition of the slave trade, these 
were exported thither in very large quantities. Letters re- 
ceived from persons in Africa, whose veracity is unquestion- 
able, assert the fact, that the slave traders are supplied with 
these necessary implements of their traffic, solely from this 
country., and that, indeed, they were to be obtained no where : 
else." 

" A very considerable slave trade," says the Report of 1814, , 
" is still carried on to the islands of France and Bourbon." 

"There is too much reason to believe that a considerable 
traffic of slaves still exists on the north coast of Africa.'''' 

" The board have still to lament the continuance of flagrant I 
abuses in several of the West India islands," &c. 

14. On the triumph of the allied arms over the power of Bo- 
naparte, in thespringof 1814, another crisis seemed to present i 
itself, propitious to the object of universal abolition. Great 
Britain had the chief share of the glory and profit of that 
event ; it was to her, in the language of all her subjects, that 
Europe owed its deliverance ; she had rescued Portugal and 
Spain; restored Ferdinand to his throne, and reinstated 
the house of Bourbon in France. Hence, it would be im- 
possible for the governments of those countries to resist her 
solicitations in favour of Africa ; or, at all events, to brave i 
herpower, in case she manifested a determination to interpose < 



SLAVE TRADE. 3? 

it as a shield between that continent and their ruthless cupi-SECT. 1 
dity. The African Institution, in the Report which I have v^''^^ 
last quoted, did not overlook the new turn of aflairs. " The 
directors," said the Report, " have long been persuaded, 
that all that can be effected, in inducing particular states to 
renounce the traffic in slaves, however important in itself, 
Avill produce but a very partial benefit to Africa, unless, on 
the conclusion of a general peace, the renunciation should be- 
come general, and be ado])ted as a part of the standing policy 
of the great commonwealth of Europe. While the war con- 
tinues, it is a matter of no moment whether the slave trade 
is abolished in France ; but it is obvious, that, if a general 
peace should leave the merchants of that countiy at liberty 
to renew their former traffic in their fellow-creatures, little, 
comparatively, av ill have been achieved for Africa by all the 
_generous efforts of this country. The present moment having 
appeared to the directors to be peculiarly favourable to the 
hope of obtaining a recognition of the great principles of the 
abolition, and even the entire and unqualified renunciation of 
this nefarious traffic by all the great powers of Europe, they 
have endeavoured to impress upon the minds of his majesty's 
ministers, the unspeakable importance of establishing a gene- 
ral convention amongthe European powers, for that purpose." 

To aid the British negotiators at Paris, the two houses of 
Parliament voted unanimouslv, on the 2d of May, addresses 
to the Prince Regent, representing the importance of a gene- 
ral abolition, and their conviction, that unless it took place, 
the practical result of the restoration of peace would be " to 
open the sea to swarms of piratical adventurers who would 
renew and extend, on the shores of Africa, the scenes of 
carnage and rapine in a great measure suspended by maritime 
hostilities ; to kindle a thousand ferocious wars," &c. In 
supporting the address of the House of Commons, Mr. Wil- 
berforce trul}^ remarked, that " with regard to France, the 
war had practically abolished the trade, and therefore, if car- 
ried on by her, it would be creating it anew." 

On the 30th May, 1814, the treaty between Great Britain 
and France was signed at Paris; and lo! France was allowed 
a term of five years in which to pursue the traffic in human 
flesh, and his Britannic Majesty restored to his most Christian 
Majestv all the colonies, factories, and establishments, of what- 
ever kind, which France possessed the 1st of January, 1792, 
in the seas and upon the continents of America, Africa^ and 
Asia, with the exception of the islands of Tobago and St. 
Lucia, and of the Isle of France and its dependencies. This 



IT T, 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

was an electric shock for the abolitionists upon principle, and 
the signal for a vigorous party assault upon the ministry. 

It seemed impossible to doubt that France would have 
yielded, had the immediate and total prohibition of the trade 
been made the sine qua non of the restitution of her colonies ; 
or had she been tempted with the Mauritius. Her utter ina- 
bility to renew the war, and the certainty that the allies would 
not have passed over to her side to enforce her pretensions 
to the slave trade, were points on which even the most credu- 
lous could not be deceived. 

The African Institution passed resolutions of reprobation ; 
petitions without number were got up throughout the coun- 
try ; motions made in Parliament ; and the stir had on the 
whole an imposing character. The following is part of the 
representations of the African Institution on the occasion. 
*' A provision is contained in the recent treaty of peace with 
France, the consequence of which must be the revival of the 
slave trade on a large scale, and to an indefinite extent. This 
revival is attended with circumstances of peculiar aggrava- 
tion. Great and populous colonies,* in which, during the last 
seven years, the importation of slaves has been strictly pro- 
hibited, have been freely ceded to France, not only without 
any sti-pulation for the continuance of that prohibition, but 
with the declared purpose on the part of that country, of 
commencing a new slave trade for their supply." 

The apprehensions of the Institution did not receive much 
relief on the appearance of the French slave trade ordinance. 
By a circular letter from the administration of the customs, 
dated 29th August, the merchants of France were apprized, 
that "the traffic was restored in all its privileges, and might 
be carried on from every port having a public bonding ware- 
house : — That all the goods, foreign as well as domestic, in- 
cluding arms and ammunition, required for this trade, might 
be shipped for the coast of Africa, duty free : That the same 
provision extended to the ship's provisions, both for the 
crew and negroes : That the cargoes or provisions were not 
to be employed, except in the purchase and conveyance of 
negroes : That French ships only could engage in the trade ; 
and, that they might import into all the French colonies, of 
which the government should recover possession, as well as 
those ceded by the treaty." 

The language held in Parliament was no less emphatical 
than that of the African Institution. As a specimen, I will 
offer some extracts from the speech of Lord Grenville. 

"That the immediate and total abolition of the slave trade 



SLAVE TRADE. 3^ 

t- 
might, in this treaty, if pursued with zeal, have been with SECT, i 
certainty obtained, is, unless I am greatly misinformed, the v^'>^ 
general sentiment of all who are conversant in foreign ne- 
gotiation ; the concurrent and decided judgment of enlight- 
ened statesmen in every country in Europe." 

" What credulity will acquiesce in the pretence, that to extort 
from France the surrender of her conquest, was easy ; to dis- 
suade her from the revival of the slave trade impracticable?" 

" This treaty has secured to our country commercial profits 
and colonial acquisitions, at the expense of France ; inconsi- 
derable in value, I admit it, but still sufficient to brand our 
national character with the dishonour of interested guilt. To 
France the renewal of the slave trade is conceded ; into her 
hands we deliver up the wretched inhabitants of Africa; and 
from her in return we receive back those advantages ; the con- 
tract is reciprocal ; the transactions simultaneous ; included 
in the same treaty, never will they be separated in the opi-!- 
nion of mankind." 

" We have consented to revive and guarantee the slave- 
trade, not because we feared war, but because we thirsted 
for more extended possessions. Such will be the just judg- 
ment, both of the present time, and of posterity; the opinion 
of impartial men in all ages. If, they will tell us, you could 
not otherwise refuse yourselves to a dishonourable contract 
for guilt, you might have proffered in exchange for it the 
abandonment of these acquisitions ; an exchange which 
France most certainly would gladly have accepted." 

" You are fully sensible also, how difficult it will be to 
prevent the application of British capital to this wickedness 
when authorized by France. How large a portion of thi^ 
trade will really be carried on in her name by your own sub- 
jects ; how much of it will be diverted to the supply of your 
own colonies, under a pretended destination to those with 
which they are so closely intermixed in the West Indian seas." 

The subject was taken up officially in the Edinburgh Re- 
view, and treated with as little reserve. The Reviewers 
cried out against " the vile mockery of an abolition in rever- 
sion, expectant upon a five years term of unstinted, nay, en- 
couraged slave trade." " England," they added, " has no 
manner of difficulty in obtaining Malta, Tobago, St. Lucia, 
the Isle of France, (not to mention the Cape ;) in short, any 
thing which may serve her interests ; she surrenders Guada- 
loiipe^ that her islands may be supplied by smuggling.'''* 

Lord Castlereagh defended the treaty, upon the grounds 
of " the strong objection" of the French rulers to immediate 
abolition, because they would appear to submit to English die- 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

tation! of the importance of ending the negotiation in mutual 
respect and confidence ; of the danger of prolonging the war by 
insisting upon a concession which France felt to be dishonour- 
able to her character as a nation, &c. He was " ready to 
admit, that Guadaloupe and Martinique being permitted to be 
points of depot, did, to a certain degree, increase the probabi- 
lity of an illicit trade being carried on from those islands with 
the British colonies. But if France had even consented to 
abolish the trade, the number of depots which would have 
otherwise existed, was sufficiently numerous for the illegal 
introduction of slaves into the islands belonging to Great Bri- 
tain. From the Havanna and Porto Rico, the possessions of 
Spain, slaves might very easily find their way into the British 
colonies." His lordship remarked, too, a point of delicacy as 
to pressing the abolition : " However disposed he and the Bri- 
tish nation might be to make sacrifices for it, he could assure 
the house that such was not the impression in France, and 
that even among the better classes of people there, the British 
government did not get full credit for their motives of acting. 
The motives were not there thought to arise from benevolence^ 
but fr 0711 a wish to impose fetters on French colonies and injure 
their commerce.'''' 

This misgiving of the French was of no fresh date, and 
could not have been altogether unknown to Parliament. In 
1807, Lord Lauderdale, whom Mr. Fox sent to negotiate with 
Bonaparte the preceding year, made the following statement 
in the House of Lords. " On my urging to the French minis- 
ters the abolition of the slave trade, I was answered, that it 
could not be expected that the French government, irritated 
as it had been by the negroes in St. Domingo, would readily 
agree to the abolition of the trade. I answered that the abo- 
lition would have been the only effectual means of preventing 
the horrors which had occurred in that island. Then the 
truth came out. I was told that England, with her colonies 
well stocked with negroes, and affording a larger produce, 
might abolish the trade without inconvenience ; but that 
France, with colonies ill-stocked, and deficient in produce, 
could not abolish it without conceding to us the greatest ad- 
vantages, and sustaining a proportionate loss."* 

The transactions in England, and the fundamental policy 
in the case, prompted the British ministry to renew their in- 
stances with the French government. An island, or if pre- 
ferable, a pecuniary indemnity to the French planters, was- 
offered for the immediate abandonment of the trade, or the 

— — — ? ' 

* Cobbclt'b Paiiiamentary Debates, vol. viii. 



SLAVE TRADE. 3( 

abridgment of the term stipulated by the treaty. It was SECT 
proposed to France to establish a system of license, so as to 
prevent the importation into her colonies of more negroes than 
rvould be necessary for the existing plantations^ and to pre- 
clude the cultivation ofnexv lands. Lord Wellington disco- 
vered that there was no disposition among the French states- 
men to relinquish the trade at once ; but, finally, after a ne- 
gotiation, the particulars of which are not a little curious, 
means were found by England to persuade the French go- 
vernment to put restrictions upon it ; particularly that of 
confining it to the south of Cape Formosa. 

The first attempts upon the Spanish government bear date 
in 1814; but Ferdinand was upon his throne, and Spain 
clear of the French. The Spanish monarch consented to 
forbid his subjects to carry slaves to foreign possessions ; 
nothing more could then be obtained, in the way and upon 
the terms which suited the views of England. 

Lord Castlereagh made his main effort, within the limits 
prescribed, at the Congress of Vienna. He succeeded, not- 
withstanding the opposition of the Spanish and Portuguese 
plenipotentiaries, in rendering the eight principal powers 
parties to the settlement of the question. Four sittings were 
specially assigned to its discussion. The fruit of the first, 
the only fruit of the whole arrangement, was the celebrated 
declaration of the 8th of February, 1815, in which all the 
powers proclaimed their detestation of the character, and their 
desire to accomplish the abolition of the slave trade ; at the 
same time that they acknowledged the right of each to take 
its own time for the total relinquishment on its own part. 
Talleyrand would not consent to abridge the term granted to 
France ; Spain would make no acceptable concession : Por- 
tugal pix)fessed her readiness to limit the duration of her trade 
to eight years, provided his Britannic majesty would on his 
side acquiesce in certain material changes in the commercial 
relations between her and Great Britain. Some of the general 
observations made by the Spanish and Portuguese plenipo- 
tentiaries, in reply to Lord Castlereagh, are worth repeating. 
The first, Count Labrador, said, " if the Spanish colonies of 
America were, as to the supply of negroes, in the same state 
as the English colonies, his Catholic majesty would not hesi- 
tate a moment in decreeing an immediate abolition : But, 
the question having been before the British parliament from 
1788 to 1807, the English traders and planters had full time 
to make extraordinary purchases of slaves ; and, in fact, they 
did so. This was proved bv the case of Jamaica, which. 
Vol. L— Z z 



IV 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

T I. in 1787, had only two hundred and fifty thousand slaves, 
"^^ whei-eas, at the period of the abolition, in 1807, she possess- 
ed four hundred thousand. During the long war with Eng- 
land, Spain had been deprived of the faculty of procuring 
negroes for herself, Jamaica had ten blacks to one white ; 
in the island of Cuba, the best provided with slaves of all 
the Spanish colonies, there were two hundred and seventy- 
four thousand whites, and only two hundred and twelve 
thousand slaves." 

The representative of Portugal alleged that " the position 
of Brasil was particularly delicate in this matter ; it was an 
immense country, which was far from possessing the num- 
ber of hands necessary for its cultivation ; that a sudden 
stoppage in the importation of negroes would be of incalcur- 
lable mischief, as well for Brasil as for the Portuguese es- 
tablishments on the coast of Africa; that the treatment of 
the slaves in Brasil was notoriously mild ; and that these 
considerations made the case of Portugal an exception; at 
all events she might be excused if she proceeded leis'tifely 
and cautiously in the affair, since, in the instance of Eng- 
land, so long an interval had occurred between the proposal 
* and the adoption of the measure of abolition." 

The primary object of Lord Castlereagh was to secure from 
. the intrusion of foreign slave vessels, that part of the African 
coast, which England had marked out for her general trade. 
In the interval between the first and second general confer- 
ence, (21st and 22d of Januarj^, 1815,) he signed two conven- 
tions with the plenipotentiary of Portugal, by which Great 
Britain released the balance due upon an old English loan to 
Portugal, and allotted three hundred thousand pounds ster- 
ling as a fund of indemnity for the owners of the Portuguese 
slave ships which her cruizers had captured before the 1st of 
June, 1814, on the ground of their being engaged in the trade 
illegally : She agreed at the same time to the abrogation of 
the treaty of 1810: Portugal, on her part, covenanted to pro- 
hibit her subjects from carrying on the slave trade, in any 
manner, to the north of the equator^ it being understood that 
they were to pursue it unmolested to the south of the line, as 
. long as it should be at all permitted by the Portuguese laws. 
'^ In a secret and conjidential letter of Lord Castlereagh to the 
duke of Wellington, j^t Paris, of August, 1814,* his lordship 
stated, that it was become necessary to consider how far cer- 
tain powers might be brought to do their duty in the matter 

* See the Pieces Officielles de Schoell, vol. vii. p. 90. 



SLAVE TRADE. 

of abolition, by a sense of interest ; or, in other words, how SECl 
they might be deprived of the undue advantage which they 
enjoyed over the states who, by a feeling of moral obligation, 
renounced the trade. Nothing, he suggested, appeared more 
likely to work the effect, than a concert among those states to 
exclude from their dominions the colonial produce of the 
refractory powers. Duke Wellington was instructed to sound 
the prince of Benevento on the subject. The true motives of 
this plan did not, we may presume, escape the penetration of 
the latter. Lord Castlereagh proposed it anew at Vienna 
to the emperor of Russia, in his formal interview with that 
monarch on the subject of the slave trade. The abolition 
states could not, he urged, do less than adopt it: Unless they 
gave a preference to such colonial products as were not raised 
by slaves 7iexvly introduced^ they would be partakers in the 
scandal and crime accompanying the growth of such as were ! 
The British negotiator was indiscreet enough to submit the 
project for adoption, at the conferences of the plenipotentia- 
ries ; with the modification that the products of the colonies 
in which the trade was forbidden, should be alone receiv- 
ed, or those of the vast regions of the globe furnishing the 
same articles by the labour of their own native inhabitants, 
meaning, says Schoell,* the British possessions in the East 
Indies. The ministers of Spain and Portugal protested against 
this expedient of coercion, and threatened that their courts 
would exclude in turn the most valuable export of the coun- 
tries by which it should be employed. 

What England could not persuade the Bourbons to do in 
1814, Bonaparte did spontaneously on his return from the 
Island of Elba. He interdicted the French slave trade at 
once, from motives of personal interest which few were at % 
loss to detect. When Louis was replaced on his throne, no- 
thing remained for him but to submit, apparently, to the will 
of the British minister who escorted him into Paris, and who , 
required him not at least to retract the only favour granted by 
the arch-tyrant to humanity. Accordingly, on the 30th of 
July, 1815, Talleyrand announced to Lord Castlereagh that 
the slave trade was thenceforward, forever, and universally, 
forbidden to all the subjects of his most Christian majesty. 
The tenor of the correspondence on the subject between the 
two viziers is among the curiosities of that day. 

In 1816, England resumed her negotiation with Spain, 



* Histoire abregee des Traitcs de Paix, vol. si. 



KEGUO SLAVEltY AND 

T I. and, finally, availing herself of the necessities of the latter, 
'JK' effected the treaty of Madrid of the 23d Sept. 1817. By 
/ this treaty, Spain, for a sum of four hundred thousand pounds 
sterling, stipulated to renounce the slave trade at once to 
the north of the line, and to prohibit it entirely, in all her do- 
minions, from the 30th May, 1820. The sum of four hun- 
dred thousand pounds bore a small proportion, indeed, to the 
wealth which Britain had drawn from the traffic in human 
flesh ; or to that which she expected to derive from the ac- 
complishment of her views on Africa.* But the new sacri- 
jice was emblazoned in Parliament, and the rescue of the 
northern part of that continent declared to be consummated. 

" We have now," said Lord Castlereagh, " arrived at the 
last stage of our difficulties, and the last stage of ouf exertions. 
One great portion of the world was rescued from the horrors 
of the traffic. The approval of the grant amounted to this^ 
whether the slave trade should be abolished or not." 

Lord Castlereagh announced, on the same occasion, the 
conclusion of a treaty with the Portuguese ambassador in Lon- 
don, for the final suppression of the Portuguese slave trade^ 
and the certaint)^ of its ratification : But his lordship's assu- 
rance was premature. The court of Brasil could not be drawn 
into any further retrenchment, than was stipulated in the 
treaty of Vienna, to which I have adverted. Sweden, who 
had never authorized the trade, readily consented to prohibit 
it, on receiving Guadaloupe, in 1813, hi deposit. The king 
of the Netherlands accepted of the condition of a total renun- 
ciation, attached to the restitution of the Dutch colonies in 
1814. 

15. Before I proceed to exhibit the actual, and what — it 
is to be feared from late British statements, which I shall 
produce, — may be considered as the final result of all these 
boasted triumphs for Africa, I wish to illustrate further the 
English sins of commission. We have seen that the 
African Institution acknowledges the participation of Bri- 



•In the debate in the House of Commons, (Feb. 9th, 1818,) Mr. Wilber- 
force said, " He could not but think that the gi-ant to Spain would be more 
than repaid to Great Britain in commercial advantages, by the opening of a 
J^eat continent to British industry; an object which would be entirely de- 
feated, if tlie slave traffic was to be carried on by the Spanish nation. Our 
commercial connexion with Africa will do much more than repay us for any 
pecuniary sacrifices of this kind. He himself would see Great Britain de- 
riving the greatest advantages from its intercourse with Africa." HansarcTs 
Pari Deh. 



I 



SLAVE TBADE. 

tish subjects in the trade, to a great extent. The same ad- SECi 
mission has been made repeatedly in Parliament, by the high- ^--"^ 
est authority. Before the establishment of the peace of 1814, 
Mr. Whitbread stated in the House of Commons, that "thei-e 
were, to his knowledge, persons in England base enough to 
wish for the return of peace, on account of the facilities it 
would afford for carrying on the slave traffic under another 
flag."* On the 18th April, 1815, Mr. Barham alleged in the 
same place, "■ that it was a well known fact that a large Bri- 
tish capital was employed in British ships, in the slave trade." 
And on the 9th of February, 1818, Lord Castlereagh held 
this language to Parliament. " It would be a great error to ' 
believe that the reproach of carrying on the slave trade ille- 
gally, belonged only to other countries. In numltrless in- 
stances, he was sorry to say, it had come to his knowledge, 
that British subjects were indirectly and largclij engaged." 

With respect to the British West India islands, it is of 
notoriety that they have been replenished with negroes 
since the British abolition. In the quotations which I have 
made from the Reports of the African Institution, the con- 
traband trade of those islands is formally denounced. The 
Report of that Society for 1815, is more pointed and circum- 
stantial in its declarations on the same head, in relation to all 
of them. It gives us to understand that twenty thousand ne- 
groes had been yearly smuggled into them, and avers that 
" all of the settlements were confident of having the means of 
providing themselves still with slaves in the proportion of 
their actual demand ;" that " insular laws, whose policy 
plainly depended on the permanence of the slave trade, re- 
mained unrepealed;" that "the assemblies still looked to 
Africa for the supply of their -wasting population." The 
Edinburgh Review, in expressing some incredulity with res- 
pect to the amount of the illicit importation, intimated in the 
Report, remarks, however, that " to question the fact of 
clandestine importation would prove extreme ignorance of 
West Indian morals, and of the state to which the adminis- 
tration of the law is of necessity reduced, where nine persons 
in ten of the inhabitants are incompetent witnesses, and are, 
moreover, the property of the remaining tenth."f 

The same Report denies that the slaves, in any one 
island, had, in regard to their legal condition, then derived the 
least benefit from the abolition acts. It represents them, also, 
as suffering the same miseries ; as equally cut off from all 

• Debate of May 2d, 1814. f No. S'd. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

T I- means of mental and religious improvem,ent. In their article 
'^^*' upon this Report, the Edinburgh Reviewers ratify its exposi- 
tion, and speak thus of their " sugar planting brethren :"— - 
*' They not only have taken no steps to encourage religious 
instruction, but have again and again attempted to prevent the 
black population from receiving it, in the only form in which 
it ever can reach them, as things are at present constituted, 
namely, by missionary preachers. The zeal of pious men 
was beginning to carry the blessings of the gospel into the 
settlements, not sectaries merely, but Church-of-England 
missions. The wisdom of colonial legislation took the alarm ; 
acts were regularly, and in all the forms, passed, to stop, by 
main force, all such attempts at illuminating the hundreds of 
thousands of their Pagan subjects. The royal assent has been 
refused, but they arfc of sufficient efficacy in the interval, and 
as often as one is annulled, another is passed. In some of the 
colonies, the impediments to manumission are enormous. 
The tax imposed by the policy of the law in those enlight- 
ened latitudes, for ever closes the door to emancipation. In 
Jamaica, the negroes are prohibited from being taught," &c. 
The work of Dickson and Steele, entitled Mitigation of 
Slavery^ of which I have already availed myself, is one of 
great and deserved authority on these subjects. It was pub- 
lished in London, in 1814, and the writers, who had long re- 
sided in the West Indies in high stations, go even beyond the 
African Institution in their representations of the nature of the 
slavery, and of the futility of the abolition acts, in that quarter. 
"The abolition," says Dr. Dickson, " of what is called the 
African slave trade, was, in itself, an object every way wor- 
thy of the long and arduous struggle which effected it. But 
its relative value, as a corrective of West Indian abuses, hath 
been greatly overrated. The reader of this volume will see 
distinctly that, as many of the worst evils of the West Indian 
"slavery were owing to other causes than the African slave 
trade, those evils could not possibly be remedied by the aboli- 
tion of that trade. This important position, so solidly esta- 
blished in the first part of the following collection, hath been 
deplorabh^ exemplified, since the date of the abolition act, in 
the accounts of respectable individuals; and in the correspond- 
ence of the secretary of state with the West Indian governors. 
The facts alluded to, though but a mere specimen of the 
West Indian slavery, clearly show, that they flowed from a 
source inherent in that slavery itself. An additional proof is, 
that, notwithstanding the abolition of the slave trade, the low- 
price of produce, and the exorbitant price of slaves, (all strong 



SLAVE TRADE. 

naotives for economizing their lives,) the deaths among theS^C 
slaves of one island^ in 1810, exceeded the births bif above ten v.^ 
thousand. No cause of any extraordinary mortality is alleged; 
but that surplus of deaths appears to have happened in the 
common course of business. On the whole, we may safely 
affirm, that the general treatment of the slaves, in the old su- 
gar islands, has not received any material improvement for a 
century and a half. The new islands have but copied the 
old ; with the difference, that the hardships inseparable from 
the clearing of fresh lands have, in all cases, deplorably ag- 
gravated the mortality." 

" Facts leave not a dovibt in the mind, that the harshness of 
the slave laws is but little softened by the lenity of the general 
practice in a7iy of the sugar islands. Bad is the best treat- 
ment which the negroes experience in the West India colo- 
nies. They all perform their labour under the whip. Mr. 
Mathison, that sensible and candid planter, states broadly, in 
1811, the general practice of underfeeding from one end of 
Jamaica to the other. He also believes that excessive labour 
is one of the prevailing causes of depopulation among the 
slaves on that island." 

The registry system for the West Indies, is grounded 
upon the inefficacy of the abolition there ; and, so far as 
appears by the facts disclosed in the House of Commons, the 
one has been found as nugatory as the other.* We may take 
an instance from the mouth of Mr. Wilberforce, of the state 
of things in Barbadoes, where, according to Dr. Dickson,f 
slavery is not near so bad as in most of the other islands. 

"Mr. Wilberforce said, (April 22d, 1818,) that the situa- 
tion of the slaves in Barbadoes was most wretched. Lord 
Seaforth when governor of the island, endeavoured to improve 
it by procuring a law to render the murder of a slave capital. 
The island was at first enraged with the governor for pro- 
posing such a measure. When it was consented to, and the 
friends of humanity in this country were led to believe that 
the condition of the slaves in that island was much bettered,' 
what was their surprise and disappointment, to find in two 
years after, when this law was laid upon the table of the 
house, that it was rendered entirely nugatory by a condition 
annexed to it ; for it was provided, that the murder to be 
capital must be unprovoked." 



• See, on this head, the Twelfth Report of the African Institution, p. 42. 
+ Mitigation of Slavery, p. 512. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

"There were cases," Mr. Wilberforce continued," in which 
a negro had purchased his freedom, and the freedom of his 
children, and trained them up with the most exemplary care, 
yet his offspring had afterwards been seized on by the creditors 
of his deceased master, because he had died an insolvent, and 
had been thus transported even to the mines of Mexico."* 

With such testimony as we have seen, notoriously extant, 
concerning the importation of negroes into the British West 
Indies, and their general condition, after the abolition act, 
the British minister. Lord Castlereagh, ventured, in his cor- 
respondence with the foreign powers in the year 1814,f to 
make the following representation. " The experience of eight 
years which have elapsed since the total abolition of the slave 
trade, as far as that depended on Great Britain, by the Par- 
liament of the United Kingdom, has furnished complete proof 
that the settlements in the West Indies have not suffered by 
the want of fresh supplies of African labourers. These colo- 
nies continue to be in a flourishing condition, and since there 
has been no new importation of slaves, the treatment of those 
already possessed has improved, and the lights of religion and 
civilization have been diffused among them?'' 

Another striking case of ministerial hardihood is furnished 
in the following extract from a speech of Mr. Goulburn, on 
the production of the Registry returns to the House of Com- 
mons, on the 9th June, 1819. ''The apparent increase of 
negro population had not arisen from any illegal importation 
of slaves into our colonies, but was attributable to other 
cavises. It might appear extraordinary that in one island the 
colonial slaves had increased, in the course of two years, up-* 
wards of five thousand. Some of these might be the produce 
of certain captures ;\ but he was perfectly convinced that the 
augmentation was not attributable to any illegal traffic !" 

Representations of this sort, in the face of those of the 
African Institution, in defiance of all fact and reason, belong 
to the old system which is exemplified in the following pas- 
sage of Mills' History of British India. 

" When the opinions which Lord Cornwallis expressed of' 
the different departments of the Indian government, at the 
time when he undertook his reforms, (1790,) are attended to, 
it will not be easy to conceive a people suffering more intensely" 



* Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. 

\ Official letter to the British minister at Madrid, 15th July, 1814. 
4^ That is to say, of foreign slave ships, whose cargoes have been sold in 
the British islands. 



§LAVE TRADE. 3f 

6^' the vices of government. The administration of justice SECT, i 
through all its departments in a state the most pernicious and ^^^v^ 
depraved; the public revenue levied upon principles incompa- 
tible with the existence of private property; the people sunk in 
poverty and wretchedness; such is the picture on the one hand: 
— Pictures of an unexampled state of prosperity rvere^ neverthe- 
less^ the pictures held forth at this very moment^ by speeches in 
parliament^ to the parliament and the fiation^ — and the f ottering- 
pictures^ as they were the pictures of the minister^ governed the 
belief of parliament^ and through parliament that of the nation.''''^ 

16. The strain of the communications of the British go- 
vernment, respecting the slave trade, to the foreign powers, 
down to the conclusion of the treaty with Spain, in 1817, 
implied that every thing would be accomplished for the por- 
tion of Africa north of the line, when the abolition was uni- 
versal with regard to that portion. At every new arrangement, 
a descant was chaunted in Parliament, to the triumphant and 
generous zeal of the ministry, who, by the progressive deca- 
pitation of " the hydra," had nearly crowned all the generous 
sacrifices of Britain with the expected reward, in the security 
of Africa and the reformation of Europe. But there was 
reason to suspect that Louis XVIII would not so easily have 
made a virtue of necessity in 1815 ; nor Ferdinand, — urgent 
as were his pecuniary wants, and comparatively unimportant 
as the acquisition of negroes had become to Spain from the 
revolt of her colonies, — have prescribed so near a term to the 
legal slave trade of his subjects ; hadnotthese monarchs been 
assured of an abundant and ready supply where it should be 
wanted, whatever anathemas and engagements might be ex- 
torted from them by the ascendant position and plausible re- 
clamations of Great Britain. All that circumstances made it 
natural to suspect, and rendered, indeed, obviously certain, 
has been realized, and is now at length proclaimed by the 
British government itself. As the political scheme has reach- 
ed a crisis when a full and vivid disclosure of the truth is ne- 
cessary for progression and complete success, it is acknow- 
ledged outright, and vehemently bewailed, that nothing has as 
yet been accomplished for Africa, practically ; that the slave 
trade has been constantly increasing, and that no limits can 
be descried to its duration or its depredations. Such is the 
purport of the thirteenth Report, dated 24th March, 1819, of 
the African Institution ; a report which bears intrinsically the 

• Book VI. vol. iii. p. o34. 

Vol. 1.-3 A 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

^' '• character of a government-manifesto : and which furnishes 
materials to complete a skeleton of the history of the abolition. 
I will use it freely in detailing the result of the British ma- 
nagement as respects France, Spain, and Portugal, severally^ 
and the main ostensible object of retribution to Africa. 

And first, with regard to France. In the Appendix to the 
Report, there is an eloquent address on the subject of the 
slave trade, to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, which is said 
to have been distributed there by Mr. Clai-kson, during the 
sittings in November, 1818. This address is evidently the 
work of the African Institution, under the direction of the 
British ministry ; and the distribution of it an expedient of 
both for their joint and several purposes. It contains the- 
following statement as to the French trade. 

" No sooner was peace proclaimed, than the traders inhu- 
man blood hastened from various quarters to the African 
shores, and, with a cupidity sharpened by past restraint, re- 
newed their former crimes." 

" Among the rest, the slave merchants of France, who had 
been excluded for upwards of twenty years, from any direct 
participation in this murderous traffic, now eagerly resumed 
it ; and to this very hour, they continue openly to carry it on, 
notwithstanding the solemn renunciation of it by their own 
government, in 1815, and the prohibitory French lawa which 
have since been passed to restrain them." 

" The revival and progress of the French slave trade have, 
in one respect, been peculiarly opprobrious, and attended with 
aggravated cruelty and mischief." 

" During the ten years which preceded the restoration of 
Senegal and Goree to France, no part of the African coast, 
Sierra Leone excepted, had enjoyed so entire an exemption! 
from the miseries produced by the slave trade as those set- 
tlements, and the country in their vicinage." 

" The suppression of the traffic was there nearly complete ; 
and, in consequence, a striking increase of population and of 
agriculture in the surrounding districts, with a proportion- 
ate improvement in other respects, gave a dawn of rising, 
prosperity and happiness, highly exhilarating to every be- 
nevolent mind." 

" It was in the month of January, 1817, that these interest- 
ing settlements were restored to France ; and melancholy, 
indeed, had been the effects : no sooner was the transfer com- , 
pleted, than, in defiance of the declarations by which the king 
of France had prohibited the slave trade to his subjects, that 
trade Avas instantly renewed, and extended in all directions. 



SLAVE TRADE. 3 

The ordinary excitements to the native chiefs, have produced SECT, 
more than the ordinary horrors. In the short space of a single v^-v^ 
year, after the change of flags,the adjoining countries, though 
previously flourishing in peace and abundance, exhibited but 
one frightful spectacle of misery and devastation." 

" Now, let it here be recollected, that France had profess- 
ed, in the face of the civilized world, her abhorrence of this 
guilt}^ commerce. In the definitive treaty of the 30th of No- 
vember, 1815, she had pledged herself ' to the entire and 
eifectual abolition of a traffic so odious in itself, and so highly 
repugnant to the laws of religion and nature.' As early as 
the 30th of July, 1815, she had informed the ambassadors of 
the allied powers, that directions had actually been ist;ued, 
* in order diat on the part of France the traffic in slaves might 
cease from that time, everj^ where and for ever.' She had, 
even previously to this, assured the British government, that 
the settlements of Senegal and Goree, restored to her by treaty, 
should not be made subservient to the revival of the slave 
trade. Yet, notwithstanding all this, no sooner do these set- 
tlements revert to her dominion, than the work of rapine and 
carnage, and desolation commence ; every opening prospect of 
improvement is crushed ; thousands of miserable captives, of 
every age and sex, are crowded into the pestilential holds of 
slave ships, and subjected to the well known horrors of the 
middle passage, in order to be transported to the French colo- 
nies in the West Indies. There, such of them as may survive, 
are doomed to pass their lives in severe and unremitting la- 
bour, exacted from them by the merciless lash of the cart- 
whip in the hands of a driver. It would admit of proof, that 
probably at no period of the existence of this opprobrious 
traffic, has Africa suffered more intensely from its ravages 
than during a pai-t of the time which has elapsed since the 
re-establishment of the peace of the civilized world." 

In another part of the Appendix, it is averred, and sufficient- 
ly proved to the date of September, 1818, that the French 
authorities in Africa allorv the slave trade to be carried on to 
any extent, under their command ; that in Senegal and Goree, 
they themselves are interested in carrying it on; and that the 
French vessels of war connive at the departure of slave ships. 
In the body of the Report, positive information to the same 
effect, is announced in this language — " The subscribers to 
the Institution will no doubt recollect the painful task which 
devolved upon the directors last year, in detailing the state of 
the slave trade on the coast of Africa, and more particularly 
that part of it which lies in the neighbourhood of the French 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

T I. settlements of Senegal and Goree. Of the statements then 
"^"^ made, ample confirmation has since been received, accompa- 
nied by additional information of a similarly disti-essing na- 
ture. A considerable slave trade appears also to have been 
carried on by French subjects at Allredra, and other places in 
the river Gambia. The information, indeed, which the direc- 
tors have received subsequently to their last Report, confirms 
the statement therein contained, of the existence, to a great 
extent, of this traffic in the French settlements on the coast 
of Africa," &c. 

So much for the unconditional restoration of the French 
possessions, and the five years charter for organized kidnap- 
ping and murder ! 

In the debate in the House of Commons, of February 9th, 
1818, which I have alreadv mentioned, some curious particu- 
lars were disclosed respecting the French slave trade, that de- 
serve to be known, in addition to the above. I will report 
them as they were stated by Sir James Mackintosh. " It 
being discovered that the trade was still carried on by France 
with great vigour, application was made by Sir Charles 
Stewart, the British ambassador, in January, 1817, for co- 
pies of ' Laws, Ordinances, Instructions, and other public 
acts, for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.' The Due de 
Richelieu had nothing to communicate but a mere colonial re- 
gulation passed eight days before^ prohibiting the importation 
of slaves into the French colonies. Notwithstanding the as- 
sertion of Prince Talleyrand's letter, in spite of the more 
solemn affirmation of the treaty, it appears that France had 
taken no legal measure for the abolition, during eighteen 
months, after she professed she had adopted it. What she did 
at that time was imperfect, and it did not appear that she had 
done any thing since." So little had she done, indeed, that Sir 
AVilliam Scott found himself obliged to release, in 181 7, a 
French slave ship detained by a British cruizei-, on the ground 
that there was no sufficient proof that the French vessel, in 
carrying on the slave trade, had violated the laws of France. 
Let us now see how the case stands with respect to Spain 
and Portugal, whom it would have been so easy to subdue to 
the purpose of abolition, ten years ago, and the mischiefs of 
whose legal appearance in the trade, might, therefore, have 
been averted. The Appendix to the Report contains a series 
of queries, dated December, 1816, addressed by Lord Castle- 
reagh to the Institution, respecting the state of the trade during 
the pre<:eding twenty-five years. Part of the information com- 
municated in reply is as follows: " The number of slaves 



SLAVE TRADE. 2 

withdrawn from western Africa during the last twenty-five SECT, 
years, is necessarily involved in much uncertainty'. There is ^"^"^ 
reason to believe that the export of the Portuguese was much 
more considerable than the amount supposed, 15,000. Pre- 
vious to the British abolition, the Portuguese had confined 
their trade almost entirely to the Bight of Benin, and the 
coast to the southward of it, but in consequence of the reduc- 
tion in the price of slaves on the Windward and Gold Coasts, 
they were gradually drawn thither. The whole of the slave 
trade, whether legal or contraband, passes, with very few ex- 
ceptions, under the Spanish and Portuguese flags. The Span- 
ish flag is a mere disguise, and covers the propei'ty of un- 
lawful traders, whether English, American, or others." 

" Since the Portuguese have been restricted by treaty from 
trading for slaves on certain parts of the African coast, they 
have resorted to similar expedients for protecting their slave 
trade expeditions to places within the prohibited district. 
And at the present moment, there is little doubt, that a consi- 
derable part of the apparently Spanish slave trade, which is 
carrying on to the north of the equator, where the Portuguese 
are forbidden to buy slaves, is really a Portuguese trade." 

" A farther use is now found for the Spanish flag, in pro- 
tecting the French slave traders ; and it is afl!irmed, that the 
French ships fitted out in France, for the slave trade, call at 
Corunna for the purpose of effecting a nominal transfer of the 
property engaged in the illegal voyage, to some Spanish 
house, and thus obtaining the x-equisite evidence of Spanish 
ownership." 

'"'' In conseqfuence of these uses to which the Spanish flag- 
has been applied, a great increase of the apparently Spanish 
slave trade has taken place of late. And as the flag of that 
nation is permitted to range over the whole extent of the Afri- 
can coast, it seems to keep alive the slave trade in places 
from which it would otherwise have been shut out ; and it 
has of late revived that trade in situations where it had been 
previously almost wholly extinguished." 

" The Portuguese flag is noAV chiefly seen to the south of 
the equator, although sometimes the Portuguese traders do 
not hesitate still to resort to the rivers between Whydaer 
and the equator, even without a Spanish disguise. The only 
two cni'izers which have recently visited that part of the 
coast, found several ships under the Portuguese flag openly 
trading for slaves, in Sago and the Bight of Benin." 

" The slave trade has certainly been carried on during the 
last two years, to a great extent, north of the equator. The 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

I. native chiefs and traders who began to believe at length that 
■^ the abolition was likely to be permanently maintained, have 
learnt from recent events to distrust all such assurances. 
Notwithstanding all that has been said and done, they now 
see the slave traders again sweeping the whole coast without 
molestation. It would be difficult fully to appreciate the 
deep and lasting injury inflicted on northern Africa, by the 
transactions of the last two or three years. An abolition on 
the part of Spain would at once deliver the whole of northern 
Africa from the slave trade, provided effectual measures 
were taken to seize and punish illicit traders. By the pro- 
longation of the Spanish slave trade, on the contrary, not 
only is the whole of northern Africa, which would otherwise 
be exempt, given up to the ravages of that traffic, and the 
progress already made in improvement sacrificed, hit facili- 
ties are afforded of smuggling into every island of the West In- 
dies ; which could not otherwise exist, and which, while 
slave ships may lawfully pass from Africa to Cuba, it would, 
perhaps, be impossible to prevent." 

This was the state of things, according to the Institution, 
at the end of 1816. We will now see what it was at the be- 
ginning of the present year, notwithstanding the conventions 
signed with Spain and Portugal in the interval. " The Afri- 
can slave trade," says the Report itself, " is still unhappily 
carried on to an enormous extent under the foreign flags, 
with aggravated horrors. The directors have to lament the 
enormous extent, not of the French slave trade only ; that 
of Spain and Portugal appears also to have greatly increased. 
Notwithstanding the great pecuniary sacrifices made by 
Great Britain to these nations, their subjects are stated by 
the governor of Sierra Leone to be now deeper in blood than 
ever." The Report mentions the fact, that at the distance 
of more than a year from the date of the Spanish and Por- 
tuguese conventions, the British naval commmander in chief 
on the African coast had received no instructions as to the 
nmeasvires to be taken in pursuance of them, nor as yet had 
any commission been established, as they prescribed. 

The estimate which the directors make in the Appendix 
to the Report, of the number of negroes transported of late 
years from Africa under the Spanish and Portuguese flags, 
falls greatly short of the real amount. Dr. Thorpe, whose 
testimony, on this head, is certainly entitled to weight, has 
made some statements which agree better with the direct 
knowledge which we have in this country, of the importation 
into the Spanish islands and into Brasil. He alleges that the 



SLAVE TRADE. < 

commissioners appointed by the British government to survey SECT 
the West Coast of Africa, three years after it had abolished 
the trade, reported eighty thousand H& the number of negroes 
annually carried away, and divided equally between the Por- 
tuguese and Spaniards. He computes, himself, from returns 
made by persons residing in the Havanna, in the Brasils, and 
on the coast of Africa, that the Spaniards carried from the 
West Coast, in 1817, one hundred thousand ; and the Portu- 
guese not less. He adds forty thousand as the number taken 
by other nations, and from other parts of that quarter of the 
globe. There is something almost overpowering for a real 
philanthropist in the observations with which this writer con- 
cludes his calculations. " As it appears that in 1807, about 
sixty thousand inhabitants of Africa were annually enslaved, 
and in 1817, two hundred and forty thousand, we may judge 
of her present deplorable condition, when the very cause of 
her barbarous and degraded state has increased four-fold; we 
should recollect the unshaken testimony presented to Parlia- 
ment, which established her miserable condition before 1807 ; 
and we cannot but lament that all the professions for her hap- 
piness, and promises for her civilization, reiterated since that 
time, have been perfectly delusive."* 

Dr. Thorpe asserts, also, that at the time Great Britain had 
the right of search, nineteen out of twenty of the contraband 
slave vessels escaped. One cannot but think that their success 
would not have been quite so great, had her cruizers exercised 
the same zeal and vigilance in pursuing them, as they did in 
hunting down the commerce of the United States, under the 
Orders in Council. 

In the first negotiations respecting the trade, which Lord 
Castlereagh opened with the French cabinet after the treaty 
of 1814, he suggested, as a desirable arrangement, the con- 
cession of a mutual right of search and capture in certain 
latitudes, between France and Great Britain, in order to pre- 
vent an illicit exportation from the coast of Africa. The 
Duke of Wellington made the proposition to the Prince of 
Benevento, but soon discovered that it was " too disagreeable 
to the French government and nation, to admit of a hope of 
its being urged with success."! I ^^ ^^ot find from the history 
of the conferences at Vienna in 1815, that it was more than 
hinted in those conferences. Spain and Portugal, however, 
in their mock renunciation of the trade north of the equinoc- 

* P. 13. View of the Increase of the Slave Trade. 

t See his letter to Lord Custlereagh of the olh Xov. 1814. 



I NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

^T I. tial line, acceded to a stipulation of like tenor. Great satis- 
faction was expressed in Parliament with the arrangement, 
when the Spanish treaty came under discussion. "The in- 
troduction of the right of search and bringing in for condem- 
nation in time of peace," was declared to be " aprecedent of 
the utmost importance." Of this precedent the British mi- 
nister resolved to avail himself at once. There is a quasi 
official exposition of his proceedings in the thirteenth Report 
of the African Institution, of which I will abstract as much 
as m.ay convey a sufficient idea of the new turn given to the 
question of abolition. 

The ministers of the great powers were assembled in Lon- 
don to confer on the subject: all attended readily except the 
representative of Portugal, who consented to appear only on 
condition of a perfect freedom of action being left to his so- 
vereign. At a meeting held in February, 1818, Lord Castle- 
reagh produced a note, which alleged, among other things. 
That, since the peace, a considerable revival of the slave trade 
had taken place, especially north of the line, and that the 
traffic was principally of the illicit description : — That, as 
early as July, 1816, a circular intimation had been given to 
all British cruizers, that the right of search (being a bellige- 
rent right) had ceased with the war : — That it was proved be- 
yond the possibility of a doubt, chat unless the right to visit 
vessels engaged in the slave trade should be established by 
mutual concessions on the part of the maritime states, the 
illicit traffic must not only continue to subsist, but increase : 
That even if the traffic were universally abolished^ and a single 
state should refuse to submit itsfiag to the visitation of vessels of 
other states^ nothing effectual ruoidd have been done : That the 
plenipotentiaries should, therefore, enter into an engagement 
to concede mutually the right of search, adhoc^ to their ships 
of war, &c. They did not deem themselves authorised to 
proceed so far, but undertook to transmit the proposition to 
their respective courts. 

It does not appear that the American minister was invited 
to be a party to these conferences. To him, however. Lord 
Castlereagh addressed a special letter in the month of June, 
1818, enclosing copies of the treaties made with Spain and 
Portugal, and inviting the government of the United States 
to enter into the plan digested in those treaties, for the repres- 
sion of the slave trade, which must, otherwise, prove irreduci- 
ble. The answer of the American government, communicated 
at the end of December by the American ambassador, is de- 
tailed in the Report of the Institution, It asserts the deep and 



SLAVE TRADE; 3 

unfeigned solicitude of the United States, for the universal SKCT. 
extirpation of the slave trade ; but, with all due comity, de- Vi^'^^ 
clines the proposed arrangements, as being of a character 
*' not adapted to the circumstances or institutions of the Uni- 
ted States." Truly, the United States had sufficiently proved 
the British right of search in time of war, to be careful not 
to create one for the season of peace. 

No answer had been received from the courts whose minis- 
ters attended the conferences in London, when the congress 
of Aix-la-Chapelle furnished the British government with the 
fairest opportunity of pushing the adoption of its whole pro- 
ject. Thither, on the heels of Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Clark- 
son repaired with the memorial, which I have already cited. 
It stated to the assembled sovereigns — That^ " in point of fact, 
little or no progress had been made in practical^ abolishing 
the slave trade :" That " all the declarations and engagements 
of the European powers as to abolition, must prove perfectly 
unavailing, unless new means were adopted :" That the only 
means left were — the universal concession of the mutual 
right of search and detention ; and the solemn proscription of 
the slave trade, as Piracy under the law of nations. 

Lord Castlereagh's official representations were of the same 
purport, and were answered in separate notes from the pleni- 
potentiaries of Russia, France, Austria, and Prussia. The 
respondents profess their readiness to make a combined ad- 
dress to the court of Brasil, in order to engage it to acceli^te, 
as much as the circumstances and necessities of its situation may 
permit^ the entire abolition of the trade ; but all reject the 
proposition of a mutual right of search, that new sine qua non 
of the salvation of Africa. France, whose concurrence, ac- 
cording to Lord Castlereagh, was," above all others, import- 
ant," gave the most peremptory refusal ; and suggested, on 
her side, a plan of common police for the trade, which would 
enable the several powers to know the transactions of each 
other, and would keep each government well apprized of all 
abuses within its jurisdiction. Upon the emperor Alexander, 
both Lord Castlereagh and the directors of the African Insti- 
tution had counted, as a sure and irresistible auxiliary. The 
" unkindest cut," however, would seem to have come from 
his Russian Majesty. The answer of his plenipotentiary was 
fitted to produce a double disconcertion ; and might be sus- 
pected of a little malice in the design. Besides alleging that 
it appeared to the Russian cabinet, beyond a doubt, that there 
were some states which no consideratioii would induce to 
submit their navigation to a principle of such high importance 

Vol. I.— 3 B 



i NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

^^ ^- " as the right of visit," he proposed an expedient to effect the 
common purpose, which went to deprive England of her sway, 
and unembarrassed action, on the west coast of Africa. This 
expedient consisted in " an institution, the seat of which 
should be a central point on that coast, and in the forma- 
tion of which all the Christian states should take a part." 
It is thus particularly described in the Russian note: " De- 
clared for everj^ neutral, to be estranged from all political 
and local interests, like the fraternal and Christian alliance, 
of which it would be a practical manifestation, this institu- 
tion would pursue the single object of strictly maintaining the 
execution of the law. It would consist of a maritime force, 
composed of a sufficient number of ships of war, appropri- 
ated to the service assigned to them ; of a judicial power, 
which should judge all crimes relating to the trade, according 
to a legislation established upon the subject, by the common 
wisdom ; of a supreme council, in which would reside the au- 
thorit\' of the institution, — which would regulate the opera- 
tions of the maritime force — would revise the sentences of the 
tribunals — would put them in execution — would inspect all the 
details, and would render an account of its administration to 
the future European conferences. The right of visit and de- 
tention would be granted to this institution, as the means of 
fulfilling its end; and perhaps no maritime nation would 
refuse to submit its flag to this police, exercised in a limited 
and clearly defined manner, and by a power too feeble to 
allow of vexations ; too disinterested on all maritime and 
commercial questions, and, above all, too widely combined 
in its elements, not to observe a severe, but impartial justice 
towards all." 

Neither the French plan oi siirveillance^ nor the Amphyc- 
tionic Institution of his Imperial Majesty, suited the views of 
Lord Castlereagh, who could not be persuaded of the practi- 
cability of either. His lordship finally proposed to qualify 
the desired right of search, by limiting its duration to a certain 
number of years ; and by this and other modifications, " he flat- 
ters himself," says the thirteenth Report of the African Insti- 
tution, " that he has made a considerable impression in re- 
moving the strong repugnance which was at first felt to the 
measure." But the directors themselves do not appear to be so 
sanguine, if we may judge from the following passage of the 
Report: "• Thus ended the conferences, and proceedings at 
Aix-la~Chapelle, respecting the more effectual abolition of the 
African slave trade, and thus have the directors been disap- 
pointed in the hopes which they had entertained, of seeing the 



SLAVE TRADE. 3^ 

noble principles, announced to the world by the congress at SECT, i 
Vienna, carried into complete effect, by the sovereigns and ^-^""''^ 
plenipotentiaries assembled in the course of the last autumn. 
Whether such another opportunity of bringing those principles 
into action may ever again occur, cannot be foreseen ; but the 
directors must be allowed to express their unfeigned regret, 
that so very favourable a combination of cixcumstances has 
led to such ummportant results^ 

The plan of England to obtain from the congress a sen- 
tence oi piracy upon the slave trade, appeared to the sove- 
reigns rather wanting in courtesy towards their royal brother 
of the Brasils, while he persisted in authorizing his subjects 
to prosecute it indefinitely as to number. It was evident, 
said the emperor of Russia, that the general promulgation 
of such a law could not take place, until Portugal had 
totally renounced the trade. At the same time, the con- 
gress might not have been able to discern the consistency, 
of proclaiming that a capital crime in the subjects of one 
nation, which those of another might do with impunity, 
under the sanction of recent treaties. It was certainly an 
awkward dut)' for an English ministry, to solicit the denun- 
ciation of piracy against the slave trade, which the English 
nation had, for two centuries, struggled to monopolize. The 
reflection upon all the generations of that whole tract of time, 
was rather too strong, in the use of such language as this — 
*' Slave-trading always involves man-stealing and murder. 
Even on the passage its murders are numerous,"* &c. The 
Lord Chancellor Eldon could not have thought so, when, op- 
posing the British abolition in 1807, "he entered into a 
review of the measures adopted by England, respecting 
the trade, which, he contended, had been sanctioned by Par- 
liameirts in which sat the wisest lawyers, the most learned 
divines, and the most excellent statesmen."! Nor could 
Lord Hawkesbury, when he moved that the words " in- 
consistent with the principles of justice and humanity," 
should be struck out of the preamble of the British abo- ^ 

lition bill.! -^o^ could Lord Sidmouth, when he said, 
*' to the measure itself he had no objection, if it could be 
accomplished without detriment to the West India islands ;"§ 
Nor the Earl of Westmoreland, in declaring that " though 
he should see the presbyterian and the prelate, the metho- 
dist and field preacher, the jacobin and murderer, unite in 



♦ The Memorial. f Hansard's Debates, vol. viii. +Ibid. §Ibid. 



I NEGRO SLAVERY A\D 

*T I. favour of the measure of abolition, he would raise his voic6 

■^"■^i^ against it in Parliament."* 

Throughout the conferences and negotiations above men- 
tioned, we find the continental powers betraying a rooted 
distrust of the motives of the British government. The 
vehemence of its execrations upon the trade ; the intensity of 
its present zeal for the welfare of Africa, contributed to excite 
suspicion, when compared with the language I have just 
cited, and with the toleration of the Spanish and Portuguese 
traffic before the peace ; — with the treaty of 1814, by which 
England, having secured for herself, in the general distribu- 
tion of spoil, some favourite objects of interest, delivered over 
to the miseries now so pathetically described, whole provinces 
which she boasted of having entirely relieved — with the free 
export of fire-arms and ammunition from the British ports to 
the coast of Africa ; and with the existence of slavery in its 
worst form, in all the British settlements, including those of 
Asia Minor and the East Indies. It was remarked that, as 
soon as it was seen in England, in 1806, that her trade 
would be abolished. Parliament petitioned the king to nego- 
tiate with foreign powers for the abolition of theirs ; but that 
nothing was vigorously attempted in this way, — all had been 
languor and connivance, — until the conclusion of peace, when 
the restitution took place, of considerable colonies, which, 
being stocked regularly and cheaply with slaves, while those 
retained by England received only a precarious and dear sup- 
ply, might speedily outgrow the latter, and supplant them in 
the markets of the world ; and when on other grounds avowed 
and pressed in Parliament, the commercial interests of Eng- 
land evidently required, if not universal abolition, at least the 
restriction to the south of the equator. 

France knew that it was with British capital and shipping 
that her merchants had embarked in the trade, immediately 
after the peace ; Spain and Portugal, that the greater part of 
the trade carried on under their flags was on British ac- 
count; and they were somewhat incredulous, when they 
were told of the British negotiators being " the organs of 
a people unanimous in its condemnation ; apprized of all 
its horrors; impressed with all its guilt; foremost in re- 
moving its pollution from themselves, and waiting with con- 
fident, but impatient hope, the glad tidings of its universal 
abolition." None of the powers had ever found those organs 
disposed to make a sacrifice for this object, beyond an island, 

• Ibid. 



SLAVE TRADE. § 

a subsidy, or a largess ; which might be considered as offered SECT, 
with a view to ample compensation in lucre ; for Mr. Wilber- v^'v- 
force was implicitly to be believed, when he said, in the 
House of Commons, in addition to what I have already 
quoted from him of a like tenor, that, " in a commercial point \ , 
of view, it was of incalculable advantage to have the supply \/ 
of that large tract of country, from the Senegal down to the / 
Niger, an extent of more than 7500 miles, with the necessa- ^ 
ries and gratifications which British manufactures and com- 
merce afford."* Parliament still contained several of the 
hitherto inflexible anti-abolitionists, who had harangued with- 
out end to prove the justice and humanity of the trade at 
large ; its very unanimity, therefore, where that of foreign 
powers was concerned, had the effect of lessening confidence 
abroad. Such a phenomenon as the union of General Gas- 
coyne with Mr. Wilberforce, of Lord Westmoreland with 
Lord Grenville, in proclaiming the unequalled guilt and in- 
famy of the slave traffic, could be viewed by the Talleyrands 
and the Nesselrodes only as indicating a universal sense of 
the great importance of the end in view, to the commercial 
ascendancy of Great Britain. 

It is easily seen, from the strain of the diplomatic notes 
addressed to Lord Castlereagh at Aix-la-Chapelle, that the 
congress had a common jealousy of the designs of England 
upon the African coast, and acted in concert in disappointing 
the hopes, and alarming the policj', of her plenipotentiary. 
To maintain a fleet upon that coast would obviously be in 
the power of none but England, so that the idea of recipro- 
city in the right of search was illusive ; and it was not con- 
trary to the entire analogy of British maritime administra- 
tion, to suppose, that, in this case, it might be pei-verted to 
the ends of rapacity, oppression, or monopoly. 

The invidiousness of the proceedings of the English states- 
men, and the incredulity which they have rendered inveterate 
in the foreign cabinets, as to their professions, in this matter 
of the slave trade, make it doubtful whether the cause of real, 
universal abolition has not suffered by the intervention of 
England. Had the appeal to the justice, humanity, magnani- 
mity, and true interests of France, Spain, or Portugal, come 
from a quarter where no selfish or hostile views could be sus- 
pected to lurk; had it been urged with steady effort, with 
the directness of conscious benevolence, and with only a part 
of that eloquence and sagacity which Great Britain has dis- 

* February 11, 1818. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

IT I. played in the argument^ it might, in the end, have effectually 
reclaimed those powers, or have raised against them such a 
combination of influence as would have led to the same happy 
result. But, in dealing with Great Britain, the calculation 
with them has been, how to avoid a suspected snare ; to coun- 
teract an insidious rival policv ; to preserve the interests 
■which they ostensibly sacrificed in compliance with the par- 
ticular necessities of their situation. Hence a more eager 
and obstinate purpose of filling their colonies with negroes 
in every practicable mode ; a greater callousness to the shame 
and criminality of the traffic — hence on the part of other 
powers, giving the same construction to the instances of 
England, little disposition to adopt any system that should 
cut off their supplies, or second her aims. Hence, too, the 
unmeaning engagements about abolition after a certain period 
of enjoyment, which only serve to stimulate the exertions of 
the slave trader, and aggravate the immediate desolation of 
Africa ; " the vows of future amendment coupled with pre- 
sent perseverance in guilt;" sacrifices promised to be made, 
with a determination to prove faithless ; solemn assurances 
of future rectitude, for whose accomplishment we are to wait 
until commercial jealousy shall cease, avarice be satiated^ 
or the sword drawn to enforce performance. 

More of cant, hypocrisy, and inconsistency, has never dis- 
graced any occasion, than this of the abolition of the slave 
trade. While it is admitted universally, and solemnly pro- 
claimed by the potentates, to be the opprobrium of Christen- 
dom, and the bane of Africa ; " repugnant to the principles of 
humanity and essential morality,"* they enter into compacts 
among themselves for guaranteeing to one or the other, the 
\ unmolested prosecution of it, during such a term as the con- 
' venience of the part)'^ may require ; and in no case is there an 
intention of observing the limitation prescribed. France de- 
mands, to use the language of Lord Grenville, five years of 
injustice and rapine, of murder and violence, laying waste a 
whole quarter of the globe, that she may recruit her colonial 
vigour, and particularly that she may have the facility of re- 
peopling St. Domingo with slaves, in case of the reduction of 
that island; England, the tutelary genius of Africa, specially 
ratifies this demand: Portugal and Spain must have eight 
years of the same horrible career, and will not agree to desist 
even then, unless their commercial relations with England 

* See the Declaration of the Congress of Vienna, 8th Feb, 1815. 



Slave trade. 3i 

shall undergo a particular change : they acknowledge the SECT. ] 
teeming wickedness of the traffic ; but, unluckily, they have ^^^^^ 
the prosperity of their dominions to promote : England dis- 
claims all idea of giving the law on the subject, or pushing 
matters to extremity :* Russia, Austria, ancl Prussia, cannot 
undertake to coerce any power, either as to time or space ; 
and decide that each is to be left to consult " the prejudices, 
habits, and interests of its subjects, and the circumstances 
of its situation :" All pledge themselves, in the last place, 
to make every possible effort to accelerate the triumph of the 
magnificent cause of universal abolition! 

The only governments, in fact, which have acted sincerely 
and independently^ in relation to it, are those of Denmark and 
the United States. I am free to confess that no small share 
of the illicit trade has been carried on by Americans, or by 
persons assuming the character ; and that no inconsiderable 
number of negroes has been clandestinely imported into the 
most southern parts of our territory. Perhaps the Federal 
Government has not exerted all the vigilance in repressing 
these abuses, which their enormity required; but the heartiest 
detestation of them is common to it and to the majority of the 
nation. The least participation in the slave traffic is certainly 
a deep stain, and a heinous guilt. The violence which this 
traffic does, in its very conception, to the rights and obliga- 
tions of human nature ; its effect in brutalizing those who 
pursue it ; the flagitious and ferocious practices with which it 
is attended ; the ineffable, accumulated woes which it inflicts 
upon its defenceless victims ; the immeasurable evils of every 
kind with which it overspreads the continent of Africa, and 
threatens that of America — conspire to invest it with a charac- 
ter of greater deformity, scandal, depravity, and pernicious- 
ness, than belongs to any other general crime of the civilized 
world. I have been the more liberal of details concerning 
the horrors of the British trade, in order to attract a more 
earnest attention to our own late offences of the sort, about 
which we have been too supine ; and against which the voice 
of every good citizen and moral man, as well as the voice and 
the arm of the government, should be perpetually raised. 

17. Widely different, under the circumstances in which we 
find ourselves, is the case of retaining the wretched race of 
Africa in bondage. The most zealous of the English philan- 



Sae the Protocol of the third conference at Vienna, Feb. 4th, 1815. 



4) NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

J^T I- thropists have not carried their aims so far, with respect to 
'■^*''*«-' West India slavery, as its immediate or speedy abolition. I 
have quoted, in my seventh section, the protest entered by 
the Edinburgh Review, against the imputation of such a de- 
sign, either to the Reviewers or any of the adversaries of the 
slave trade. 7'hat journal has returned several times to the 
topic; in the eighth number, for instance, in the following 
language : — " It is scarcely necessary to premise, that the ad- 
vocates for the abolition of the slave trade most cordially 
reprobate all idea of £'OT<:/?zc?/?a^2V?^§- the slaves that are already 
in our plantations. Such a scheme indeed is svfficientlif an- 
swered by the story of the galley slaves in Don ^tixotc^ and 
we are persuaded, never had any place in the minds of those 
enlightened and judicious persons, who have contended in 
this cause." 

So late as 1817, Lord Holland, one of the most devoted 
among the associates of Mr. Wilberforce, moved, in the 
House of Peers, a petition to the Prince Regent, praying 
that the idea of emancipating the West India slaves might be 
disowned by royal proclamation throughout the islands ; 
which was done accordingly. Their itnjitness for freedom^ 
no less than the danger to the white inhabitants, has been al- 
leged as the motive for discarding all projects implying their 
liberation. This has always been treated in England as a 
question of practicability, not of strict justice. To give a 
specimen of the mode of reasoning on the subject, I will ex- 
tract a passage from a speech of Mr. W. Grant, in the House 
of Commons. 

" Mr. W. Grant said, he had ever conceived that the end 
of legislation was to do good, and to consider justice in our 
means of doing it. Now, there were some occasions on. 
which it was impossible to do so ; and there the greatest good 
must be the object even in violation of strict justice. He 
would illustrate his meaning by an instance. Let them sup- 
pose a case of emancipation. Wherever slavery existed, 
there necessarily existed oppression, and the continuance of 
slavery was consequently a continuance of oppression. If he 
had professed to do justice, and a slave were to ask him, how 
could he account for the use he had in view in making him a 
slave ; if he meant to do j ustice, he should not continue him a 
slave? he should answer, that his means were circumscribed, 
and that it Avas true philanthropy to effect the greatest good, 
which the nature of the case would admit. If he forbore to 
do an act, abstractly an act of humanity, but which would 
produce a different consequence, he surely acted rightly i 



SLAVE TRADE. g 

were he to act otherwise, he should not satisfy his con- SECT, 
science, because he should not diminish the misery he wish- v^"^^ 
ed to relieve." 

Expediency is thus justified, and allowed on all hands to 
prevail, touching the existence of slavery in the West Indies. 
That the British government possesses the poiver to suppress 
it, no one ventures to deny. The Edinburgh Review has 
scouted the supposition of armed resistance on the part of the 
islands, to any exertion of the supreme authority of the 
mother country. " If," says the 50th number, " a threat of 
following the example of America, that is, of rebelling, be 
held out, then the answer is, that what was boldness in the 
one case, would be impudence in the other, and England 
must be reduced very low, indeed, before she can feel greatly 
alarmed at this threat from a Caribbee island." She is, 
therefore, responsible for the existence of slavery in the West 
Indies, as much as if it existed within her own bosom, and we 
might retort upon her the phrase of the Edinburgh Review 
directed against us, — " That slavery should exist among men 
who know the value of liberty, and profess to understand its 
principles, is the consummation of wickedness.'''* 

Were the question of the abolition of West India slavery to 
be treated as one of strict justice, England could have no 
escape from its fullest pressure. The circumstance of her 
having created and fostered the slavery itself; of her having 
been chiefly instrumental in making it the fate of so many 
millions of the race of its victims there, would give every 
possible degree of force and solemnity to the abstract obli- 
gation in the case. V/hile, therefore, slavery continues to 
exist undisturbed in the West Indies, the Briton who approves 
of the policy of maintaining it, cannot deny to the United 
States, the benefit of the plea of expediency in regard to the 
emancipation of their blacks. To avert a personal danger 
from her planters, and to maintain her lucrative connexion 
with the islands, England abstains from " tearing off the 
manacles," — the most galling that ever were imposed — from, 
a million of that race ; she even abstains, upon considera- 
tions of possible disadvantage, as the postponement of the 
Registry Bill shows, from measures adapted merely to the 
amelioration of their condition. 

I have, I think, proved in the first pages of this sec- 
tion, that but a slight degree of blame attaches to the co- 
lonists, respecting the existence of slavery in this country ; 
and that their descendants were in no measure culpable, as 
far down as the declaration of our independence. Thev 

Vol. 1,-3 C 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

were no more so, than they would have been, for an heredi- 
tary gout or leprosy, ascribable in its origin to the vices of 
the parent state, and which the authors of it should have stu- 
diously prevented them from curing. The continuation of 
the system of slavery among us, dvring the Revolution^ was as 
much a matter of necessity, as it ever had been before. It 
was not the time for the southern states, to make the experi- 
ment of a fundamental alteration in the whole economy of 
their existence, when they were contending with a ruthless 
foe who sought to array the whole body of negroes against the 
whites, and who would have availed himself of the greater 
freedom of action which emancipation must have afforded the 
former, to accomplish his diabolical purpose. 

But the northern and middle states, more auspiciously cir- 
cumstanced, began the work of extirpating the evil from their 
own bosom, even before the termination of the revolutionary 
struggle. In 1780, Pennsylvania decreed a gradual aboli- 
tion ; in the same year an immediate one was virtually effect- 
ed in Massachusetts ; the example of Pennsylvania was fol- 
lowed throughout New England at the distance of a few 
years ; all that portion of the Union, north of the state of De- 
laware, has since pursued the same course. 

It was more than a practical moralist could expect or ex- 
act, that the southern states, retaining sovereign governments 
of their own, should trust the federal councils with the 
determination of such a question as the emancipation of 
their slaves, on which their highest interests of property and 
safety were immediately dependent. No power to decide for 
them on this question could be communicated, according to 
the drift and nature of our union, either to the Revolutionary 
Confederation, or to the actual government. The power of 
legislating in all respects for the territory belonging to the 
United States, accrued necessarily, however, to both ; and it 
was exercised in relation to slavery, by the first, in a manner 
to evince the rectitude of the general spirit on the subject, ren- 
dered impotent in the south by the strongest of impulses, if not 
the first of duties — self-preservation. The ordinance enacted 
by the Congress of the United States, in 1787, for the go- 
vernment of the territory north west of the river Ohio, con- 
tains the following article — '' There shall be neither slavery 
nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than 
in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been 
duly convicted." This vast region was thus scrupulously 
preserved from the evil; and the states of Ohio, Indiana, and 
niinois formed out of it, make an integral part of that consi",* 



SLA^VE TRADE, 3y 

derable and most prosperous division of our empire, to which, SECT, i; 
happily, an Englishman may emigrate without " exposing 
his own character or the character of his children to the 
demoralizing effect of commanding slaves." 

18, The question of the existence of slavery isnot,asIhave 
intimated, — could not be, — put within the jurisdiction of the 
present government of the United States. The condition of 
things assuring, for a long time, to the part of the country ex- 
empt or soon to be exempt from the evil, a numerical majo- 
rity in the federal legislature, this domestic interest of the 
southern members of the Union, vital and pre-eminently 
delicate in its nature, would have been placed at the mercy 
of men incapable, like the Edinburgh Reviewers, of under- 
standing it thoroughly ; liable to an undue bias resulting 
from the action of good principles ; and who, whatever their 
general spirit of forbearance, considerateness of character, 
and warmth of political friendship, might, from ignorance 
and prejudice combined, through a mistaken patriotism and 
philanthropy, or in obedience to a sentimental clamour of 
their constituents, seconded by a generous zeal in their own 
breasts, hastily take a step which would sooner or later in- 
volve both master and slave, in the south, in one common ruin. 

As regards, then, the existence of slavery within the limits 
of the Union, the federal government has no responsibility 
such as that of the British parliament, in its omnipotence, 
with respect to the whole internal economy of the British 
possessions. The eleven of these American states, in which 
slavery is now abolished, are not implicated in the demerits 
of the question. To break loose from the confederation, and 
thus to risk their own political independence, because the 
other members do not perform that which is impracticable; 
because these happen, without their own fault, to be afflicted 
with the curse of negro slavery ; or to attempt to enforce by 
arms, an abolition ; is what no sane person will consider as 
incumbent upon them, and what would hardly be advised by 
England, who neither coerces nor discards the West Indies; 
and who would not " give the law" to Spain, Portugal, or 
France, with respect to the slave trade — infinitely the more 
detestable crime and destructive evil — when those powers 
were at her beck. 

The eastern and middle states have not been backward in 
discharging any duty in the way of exhortation and aid, which 
their political and other ties with the slave-holding countries 
might seem to create. Their doctrine as to human rights is as 



8 NEGKO SLAVKRY AXD 

IRTI. broad, as sincerely adopted, and as loudly proclaimed, as 
'^''^^^ that of England ; abolition societies abound in them, who 
do not yield in point of zeal to the African Institution, and 
have no compromise to make with any government.* The 
citizens of those states, in emigrating to the w^est, as they 
do constantly in great numbers, manifest the soundness of 
their feelings and principles on this subject, by settling in 
preference, in the parts from which negro slavery is exclud- 
ed. Hence, the astonishing growth of the states of Ohio 
and Indiana, the first of which has outstripped, in advances 
of every kind, whatever the world had seen in the spontane- 
ous formation of communities. 

But, those members of the Union, of which I am noAV 
speaking, while they have inculcated w ithout reserve, in the 
national councils, every truth, either abstract or practical, ap- 
pertaining to the question of our negro slavery, have not been 
blind to the just sentiments of their southern associates, who 
alone are accountable ; nor have they overlooked, though they 
tnavnot have always fully measured, the difficulties inherent 
in the situation of the latter. They, who have better opportuni- 
ties of understanding it than the British reviewers, are far 
from thinking that it " affords no apology for the existence of 
slavery." They see it in the same light, in this respect, as 
thev see that of the West Indies, which the Reviewers have 
declared a complete justification : for, though the negroes in 
our slave-holding states are not near so numerous in the pro- 
portion to the whites, as in the West Indies ; and though, 
from the superiority of their condition, they are better pre- 
pared for freedom, yetthey are in sufficientnumber to assure, 
in the event of insurrection, the most horrible disasters, before 
they could be subdued, with the earliest possible aid from the 
other states ; and, they are still, from inevitable causes, far 
from the point of being prepared to exist here out of the bonds 
of slavery, with advantage to themselves, or safety to the 
whites. 

19, Before the American revolution, the British policy of 
multiplying their numbers by impoi-tations from Africa, closed 
the door against an attempt to qualify them, by moral and po- 
litical instruction, for that state. Such an attempt would ap- 
pear to have been equally impracticable, in the course of the 
revolutionary war, if we look only to the engrossing avoca- 

• See the writings of Dr. Thorpe for an explanation of this innuendo. He 
roundly charges Mr. Wilberforce and tlie Institution, with playing into the 
hands of the ministiy. 



SLAVE TRADE. ? 

tions of the struggle, and to the belligerent system of the mo- SRCT 
ther coiintr}-. But it was so then, and has been ever since, ^-^"^ 
from other causes ; more obviously, as the numbers of the 
blacks increased. An effectual training of the kind is incom- 
patible with their very being as slaves, and with the nature of 
the toil incident to their situation. It presupposes their eman- 
cipation, or such a modification of their existence as would 
be equivalent, in reference to their value as property, or to 
the danger threatened by their exemption from restraint. The 
doctrine so long popular and pursued in England, and main- 
tained openly by some of her most distinguished statesmen,* 
that the labourinji^ classes should not be enlightened, lest they 
might become unwilling to perform the necessary drudgery of 
their station in life, and prone to rise against the monarchical 
scheme of social order, was not, perhaps, in her case, altoge- 
ther without foundation as to the latter topic of apprehension. 
Now, though the very reverse is the soundest policy for us, 
with our institutions, as respects the whites, that doctrine, if 
the right of the southern American to consult his own safety 
and the ultimate happiness of his slaves, be admitted, is un- 
questionably just in relation to the body of the southern ne- 
groes. You could not attempt to improve and fashion their 
minds upon a general system, so far as to make them capable 
of freedom in the mass and apart, without exposing yourself, 
even in the process, or in proportion as they began to under- 
stand and value their rights, to feel the abjection of their 
position and employment, calculate their strength, and be fit 
for intelligent concert — to formidable combinations among 
them, for extricating themselves from their grovelling and se- 
vere labours at once, and for gaining, not merely an equality 
in the state, but an ascendancy in all respects. The diflference 
of race and colour would render such aspirations in them, 
much more certain, prompt, and active, than in the case of a 
body of villeins of the same colour and blood with yourselves, ' 

whom you might undertake to prepare for self-government. 
The Duke of Wellington, in the late debate on Catholic 
emancipation in the British House of Peers, expressed his 
belief that the Catholics of Ireland, if relieved from tlieir ! 

disabilities, would endeavour to put down the reformed reli- 
gion, and this because of the feelings which must accompany 
the recollection, that that religion had been established in their i 

country by the sword. What consequences, then, might we 
not expect in the case of our slaves, from the sense of recent 

* See puge 69, Sect. ii. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

suffering and degradation, and from the feelings incident to 
the estrangement and insulation growing out of the indelible 
distinctions of nature ? 

I know of but one mode of cori-ecting those feelings and 
preventing alienation, hostility, and civil war ; of making the 
experiment of general instruction and emancipation with any 
degree of safety. We must assure the blacks of a perfect 
equality in all points with ourselves ; we must labour to in- 
corporate them with us, so that we shall become of one flesh 
and blood, and of one political familv ! It is doubtful even 
whether we could succeed in this point, so gregarious are they 
in their habits, and so strong in their national sympathy. No 
sublime philanthropist of Europe has, however, as yet, in his 
reveries of the impiety of political distinctions founded upon 
the colour of the body, or in his lamentations over our inj ustice 
to the blacks, exacted from us openly this hopeful amalgama- 
tion. It would, no doubt, suit admirably the views of our 
friends in England, who would then have full scope for plea- 
santcomparisons between the American and English intellect, 
and the American and English complexion.* 

I could suggest another consideration, alone sufficient to 
have deterred our southern states from hazarding, since our 
revolution, the measure of a general abolition of negro slavery, 
accompanied with the continuance of the negroes within their 
limits. It would have put those states especially, and this 
federal union, at the mercy of Great Britain. The facility 
of tampering Avith the blacks, and of exciting them to insur- 
rection, would have been increased for her, incalculably, in 
their new condition, in time of war. Let her conduct on this 
head during the revolutionary struggle, and in our late contest, 
in relation both to the Indians and negroes, determine the 
point whether she would have availed herself of the op- 
portunity. 

On the subject of the abolition of the negro slavery of the 
south. Judge Tucker, whom I have already cited, has made 
some remarks which cannot fail to have great weight with 
every dispassionate and candid mind. 

" It is unjust," he says, "to censure the present generation 
for the existence of slavery in this country, for I think it un- 
questionably true, that a very large proportion of our fellow- 
citizens lament that as a misfortune, which is imputed to them 



* See tlie Quarterly Review of May, 1819, on the point of compJcxion. 
" The white men, women, and cliildren, are all saHow in America," &ci 



SLAVE TRADE. 

as a reproach ; it being evident that, antecedent to the revolu- SECT. 
tion^ no exertion to abolish, or even to check the progress of ' ""^ 
slavery, could have received the smallest countenance from 
the crown, without whose assent the united wishes and exer- 
tions of every individual here, would have been wholly fruit- 
less and ineffectual: it is, perhaps, also demonstrable, that at 
no period since the revolution, could the abolition of slavery 
in the southern states have been safely undertaken, until the 
foundations of our newly established governments had been 
found capable of supporting the fabric itself, under any shock, 
which so arduous an attempt might have produced." 

" The acrimony of the censures cast upon us must abate, 
at least in the breasts of the candid, when they consider the 
difficulties attendant on any plan for the abolition of slavery, 
in a country where so large a proportion of the inhabitants 
are slaves, and where a still larger proportion of the cultiva- 
tors of the earth are of that description. The extirpation of 
slavery from the United States is a task equally momentous 
and arduous. Human prudence forbids that we should pre- 
cipitately engage in a work of such hazai-d as a general and 
simultaneous emancipation. The mind of man is in some 
measure to be formed for his future condition. The early im- 
pressions of obedience and submission, which slaves have re- 
ceived among us, and the no less habitual arrogance and as- 
sumption of superiority among the whites, contribute equally 
to unfit the former for freedom^ and the latter for equality. 
To expel them all at once from the United States would, in 
fact, be to devote them only to a lingering death, by famine, 
by disease, and other accumulated miseries. To retain 
them among us, would be nothing more than to throw so 
many of the human race upon the earth, without the means 
of subsistence ; they would soon become idle, profligate, and 
miserable. They would be unfit for their new condition, and 
unwilling to return to their former laborious course." 

These observations were published in 1803 ; but they are 
equally applicable to the succeeding period. Our foreign re- 
lations were always such in the interval between the com- 
mencement of the late war with England and the year just 
mentioned, as to give an aspect of extreme danger to imme- 
diate abolition; and there was no room for the question 
during the continuance of the war. The difficulties of the 
case increased, indeed, with the great increase of the ne- 
groes, independently of our general political embarrass- 
ments, both internal and external, Avhich were sufficient to 
absorb our care and faculties. 



1 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

^T r. It was by gradual, voluntary enfranchisement, not by legis- 
lative abolition, that an end was put to the villeinage of Eng- 
land, a bondage as complete and degrading as that of our ne- 
groes, and which lasted until the reign of Elizabeth. But the 
villein^ when emancipated, being of the same race, colour, 
and general character with the master, was assimilated and 
conciliated at once ; intermarriage neither debased the blood, 
nor destroyed the identity, of the nation ; but added to its 
strength and security. The gradual emancipation of the ne- 
groes of our southern states, if we supposed them to remain, 
would, in the end, produce the same inadmissible condition 
of things as the immediate, — a two-fold, or a motley nation ; 
a perpetual, wasting strife, or a degeneracy from the Euro- 
pean standard of excellence, both as to body and mind. 
As far as it has been tried, it has inspired no confi- 
dence, whether as regards the happiness of the blacks, or the 
security of the whites. Virginia took advantage of her in- 
dependence to authorize manumission, which the policy of 
the mother country discountenanced. Judge Tucker calcu- 
lates that upwards of ten thousand obtained freedom in 
Virginia in this way, in the interval between 1782, when she 
passed her law, and the year 1791. In 1810, according to 
the census, the number of her free negroes amounted to thirty 
thousand five hundred and seventy. In Maryland, there 
were forty thousand j the increase having been near twenty- 
six thousand since 1790. In the states south of Virginia, 
this class was not so numerous, but yet not inconsiderable. 
We find, by Dr. Seybert's tables, that the free negroes and 
mulattoes increased 185.05 per centum, from 1790 to 1800 ; 
and from 1790 to 1810, 313.45. This extraordinary in- 
crease he ascribes to emancipations of slaves by their mas- 
ters. Thus the experiment has been ample ; and now let us 
see what is the result in the slave-holding states. It is fully 
given in the following representations which come from the 
pen of a politician well known, and most deservedly and 
highly respected, in Europe. 

" You may manumit a slave, but you cannot make him a 
white man. He still remains a negro or a mulatto. The 
mark and the recollection of his origin and former state still 
adhere to him; the feelings produced by that condition, in his 
own mind and in the minds of the whites, still exist; he is 
associated by his colour, and by these recollections and feel- 
ings, with the class of slaves; and a barrier is thus raised be- 
tween him and the whites, that is, between him and the free 
class, which he can never hope to transcend. The authority 
of the master being removed, and its place not being supplied 



SIAVE TRAi.^:. < 

by moral restraints or incitements, he Hvls in idleness, and SECT.',' 
probably in vice, and obtains a precarious supj.'ort by begging ^^"V 
or theft. If he should avoid those extremes, and follow soine 
regular course of industry, still the habits of thougluless im- 
providence which he contracted while a slave himself, or has 
caught from the slaves among whom he is forced to live, who 
of necessity are his companions and associates, prevent him 
from making any permanent provision for his support, by 
prudent foresight and economy; and in case of sickness, or 
of bodily disability from any other cause, send him to live 
as a pauper, at the expense of the community." 

" But it is not in themselves merely that the free people of 
colour are a nuisance and burden. They contribute greatly 

^to the corruption of the, slaves, and to aggravate the evils of 
their condition, by rendering them idle, discontented, and dis- 
obedient. This also arises from the necessity under which the 
free blacks are, of remaining incorporated with the slaves, of 
associating habitually with them, and forming part of the 
same class in society. The slave seeing his free companion 
live in idleness, or subsist, however scantily or precariously,, 
by occasional and desultorv employment, is apt to grow dis- 
contented with his own condition, and to regard, as tyranny 
and injustice the authority which compels him to labour. 
Hence he is stronglj- incited to elude this authority by neglect- 
ing his work as much as possible ; to withdraw himself from 
it altogether by flight, and sometimes to attempt direct resist- 

<. ance. This provokes or impels the master to a severity which 

: would not otherwise be thought necessary ; and that severity, 
by rendering the slave still more discontented with his con- 

I dition, and more hostile toward his master, by adding the sen- 
timents of resentment and revenge to his original dissatisfac- 
tion, often renders him more idle and worthless, and thus in- 
duces the real or supposed necessity of still greater harshness 
on the part of the master. Such is the tendency of that com- 
parison which the slave can'not easily avoid making, between 
his own situation and that of the free people of his own colour, 
•who are his companions, and in every thing except exemption 
from the authority of a master, his equals : whose condition, 
though often much worse than his own, naturally appears bet- 
ter to him ; and being continually under his observation, and 
in close contact with his feelings, is apt to chafe, goad, and 
irritate him incessantly. This effect indeed is not always pro- 
duced, but such is the tendency of this state of things ; and it 
operates more extensively, and with greater force, than is 
commoniv supposed.'' 
Vol. i.~3 D 



N'EGnO SLAVERY AND 

!• ^" But this effect, injurious as it must be to the character 
•' oiKi r.jnduct of the slaves, and consequently to their comfort 
ar.<i happiness, is far from being the worst that is produced by 
the existence of free blacks among us ; a majority of the free 
blacks, as we have seen, are, and must be an idle, worth- 
h'rSy and thievish race. It is with this part of them that the 
slaves will necessarily associate, the most frequently and the 
most intimately. Free blacks of the better class, who gain a 
comfortable subsistence by regular industry, keep as much as 
possible aloof from the slaves, to whom in general they regard 
themselves as in some degree superior. Their association is 
confined, as much as possible, to the better and more respect- 
able class of slaves. But the idle and disorderly free blacks 
naturally seek the society of such slaves as are disposed to be 
idle and disorderly too; whom they encourage to be more 
and more so, by their example, their conversation, and the 
shelter and means which they furnish. They encourage the 
slaves to theft, because they partake in its fruits. They re- t 
ceive, secrete, and dispose of the stolen goods : a part, and 
probably much the lai-gest part, of which they often receive, i 
as a reward for their services. They furnish places of meet- | 
ing and hiding places in their houses, for the idle and the .| 
vicious slaves ; whose idleness and vice are thus increased ,'!j 
and rendered more contagious. These hiding places and j) 
places of meeting are so many traps and snares, for the young » 
and thoughtless slaves, who have not yet become viciovis: so i 
many schools in which they are taught, by precept and ex- | 
ample, idleness, lying, debauchery, drunkenness, and theft, i 
The consequence of all this is very easily seen, and I am sure '!j^ 
is severely felt in all places, where free people of colour exist | 
in considerable numbers."* ' ;^ 

The experience of the states north and east of the Susque>^,| 
hannah, with regard to this class of persons, is not, on thefv 
whole, much more encouraging. The numljer of respectable l; 
individuals is considerably greater indeed, but the charactepx 
of the mass nearly the same. Nor can it be urged that 
they are here debarred access to the ordinary means of moral 
and intellectual regeneration. On the contrary, schools are 
established for them ; they are aided in procuring the conve- 
niences for religious instruction and divine worship; they are 
united in societies adapted to produce self-respect, and men- 
tal activity ; exemplary attention is paid, in numerous in- 



* LeUcr of Robert Goodloe Harper, Esq. to the Secretary of the Ameri- 
can CoJonization Sliciety. August 20th, 1S17. . 



SLAVE TRADE. £ 

stances, to the rcg-ulation of their habits and principles. SECT. 
Thej^ have every facility which is enjoyed by the labouring '■>^^^ 
classes among the whites, of acquiring a plain education, and 
a comfortable subsistence, and of making provision for their 
children. They have the same legal security in person and 
property, and generally, the same political rights as the rest 
of the community. 

In the slave-holding states, they do, indeed, labour under 
civil incapacities ; and the policy of denying them the higher 
privileges of citizenship, is imperative. We have felt the in- 
convenience of naturalized Europeans exercising those privi- 
leges in distinct bodies, collected and animated by national 
feeling; the risk of the African race voting and legislating 
with the esprit de corps^ is too serious to be incurred, even 
where all of the race might be free, provided they should be 
at all numerous ; and to incur it would be madness, where a 
considerable number of them should, as slaves, remain to be 
irritated and goaded to revolt, by the invidiousness of the 
example, and the inevitable conspiracy of the others for the 
universal release of their brethren. If we suppose that the 
multitude of free blacks whom Virginia, for instance, has now 
in her bosom, would exercise the privileges of citizenship, 
were these granted to them ; and if we then assume the na- 
tural consequences, the elevation of some of their number to 
the legislature, and a concert of views and action among the 
whole, we must see, that she would have to prepare herself 
at once for the alternative of a general extinction of her 
negro slavery, whatever might be the catastrophe ; or of the 
establishment of a restraining code and police which, if it 
proved effectual to prevent that danger, must aggravate the 
condition of the slave, and defer the period at which his 
emancipation might otherwise take place. " The experiment, 
so far as it has been already made among us," says Judge 
Tucker, " proves that the emancipated blacks are not ambi- 
tious of civil rights. To prevent the generation of such an 
ambition, appears necessary; for if it should ever rear its 
head, its partizans, as well as its opponents, will be enlisted 
by nature herself, and always ranged against each other." 

20. The complaints which the British travellers and re- 
viewers have made of the unjust disfranchisement of the 
free blacks, have then no foundation in fact, as regards the 
eastern states ; nor in sound speculation, in reference to the 
southern. The disfranchisement which exists in the latter, 
cannot be said to be unjust^ if injustice in the business of life, 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

be not a mere abstraction, and have any thing to do with the 
' consideration of self-preservation, and the welfare of the ma- 
jority. All qualifications of property in the matter of elec- 
tion and legislation would be unjust^ and the doctrine of uni- 
versal suffrage, which the Edinburgh Review has so stoutly 
combated, the only true one, if the above mentioned com- 
plaints were admissible. 

With what an ill grace does reproach on the subject of 
disfranchisement, come from an Englishman ! One-fourth of 
the whole united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland — 
four-fifths of the population of Ireland separately — are inca- 
pable of sitting in Parliament, and of holding various civil 
and military stations. The motive for continuing this sys- 
tem of exclusion is avowed to be expediency. A large por- 
tion of the most intelligent politicians of Great Britain deny 
the fact of the alleged expediency ; and surely, in the case of 
the Catholics of England, a small body, confessedly quali- 
fied in point of understanding, morals, property, tried loyal- m 
ty ; there could be no practical inconvenience, as there is not » 
even pretended to be the least direct danger, in admitting 
them to all the benefits of the British constitution; except 
only that their admission might render the Catholics of Ire- 
land more earnest and importunate in seeking the 'same 
level. The case of the latter even, which wears a more plausi- 
ble air as to expediency, is, in this respect, in no degree so 
strong as that of the negroes in our southern states, and in- 
finitely beyond it in point of practical hardship and moral de- 
formity.* England disfranchises, not a race of men of a 
different complexion from her own, and of inveterate hete- 
rogeneity ; degraded, in the general estimation of the Eui-o-J 
pean race, and who had been forced upon her hands by ano-| 
ther country ; insensible to the value of political rights, and 
incompetent to exercise them beneficially ; but a people in 
whose favour all the natural sympathies, and most endearing 
natural affinities plead to her heart; whom she and all the 
civilized world acknowledge to be their equals in the choicest 
endowments of mind and body ; whose country she invaded, 



I 



and whose independence she crushed ; among whom she es 
tablished by the sword that reformed religion, the dissent 
from which is the pretext for their disfranchisement; to whom 
she owes a boundless retribution for ages of acknowledged* 
misgovernment and oppression, and gratitude for the most* 
important services and aids rendered to her in every branch 
of her public business. 

* See Note V. 



SLAVE TKADE. I 

21. Noth'.ng can be more false than the representations of SK<^'T, 
the English travellers concerning the treatment of the free '"^'^ 
blacks by the whites in the middle and eastern states. It is 
not true that they are " excluded from the places of public 
worship frequented by the white ;" that- " the most degraded 
white will not walk or eat with a negro ;" or that they are 
*' practically slaves."'* Tlieir situation as hired domestics, 
mechanics, or general labourers, is the same in all respects as 
that of the whites of the same description; they are fed and 
paid as well ; equally exempt from personal violence, and free 
to change their occupation or their emplover. They approach 
us as familiarly as persons of the correspondent class in Eng- 
land approach their superiors in rank and wealth ; and, in 
general, betray much less servility in their tone and carriage. 
They do not make part of our society, indeed; they are not 
invited to our tables ; they do not marry into our families; 
nor would they, were they of our own colour, with no higher 
claims than they possess, on the score of calling, education, 
intelligence, and w.ealth. I confess that whatever claims they 
might possess in these or other respects, those are advantages 
from which thev would be excluded ; there must remain, in 
any case, a broad line of demarcation, not viewed as an incon- 
venience by them, but indispensable for our feelings and inte- 
rests. Nature and accident combine to make it impassable. 
V Their colour is a perpetual memento of their servile origin, 
.and a double disgust is thus created. We will not, must 
.not, expose ourselves to lose our identity as it were ; to 
be stained in our blood, and disparaged in our relation of 
being towards the stock of our forefathers in Europe. This 
may be called prejudice ; but it is one which no reasoning 
can overcome, and which we cannot wish to see extinguished. 
We are sure that it would exist in an equal degree with 
any nation of Europe who might be circumstanced like our- 
selves ; we do not find it so gross in itself, or so hurtful and 
unjust in its operation, as those of an analogous cast which 
prevail in England. " Men of true speculation," says Mr. 
Burke, " instead of exploding general prejudices, employ 
their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which inheres in 
them. If they find what they seek, they think it more wise 
to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to 
cast away the coat of prejudice, and leave nothing but the 
naked reason." 

* These are the allegations of Fearon ; worthy of notice only so far as they 
liave been employed as texts by tlie Reviewers. See Note W. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

r I- 22. The unfortunate condition and character of the free 
"^•^ blacks generally, are not imputable to the whites ; but to the 
existence itself of negro slavery among us, and to the circum- 
stance of a distinctive colour. The first is the work of Eng- 
land ; the other of nature. As the case is, we need not be sur- 
prised, nor can we much lament, that some of the southern 
states have passed laws to discourage manumission. The 
enactment of such laws proves that the practice prevailed, or 
was likely to prevail, notwithstanding the injuriousness of the 
effects.. We know that many thousands of the planters of the 
old states in the south, are restrained, not by the laws, but by 
a tenderness and sense of duty to the negroes themselves, and 
to the commonwealth. There are few Americans capable of 
reasoning calmly and from experience, on this subject, who do 
iiot concur, in reference to the southern states at least, in the 
following sentiments of the enlightened and benevolent en- 
quirer, whose accurate representation of the condition of the 
free blacks I have quoted above. 

"The considerations stated in the first part of this letter, 
have long since produced a thorough conviction in my mind, 
that the existence of a class of free people of colour in this 
country is highly injurious to the whites, the slaves, and the 
free people of colour themselves : consequentl)', that all eman- 
cipation, to however small an extent, which permits the per- 
sons emancipated to remain in this country, is an evil, which 
must increase with the increase of the operation, and would 
become altogether intolerable, if extended to the whole, or 
even to a very large part, of the black population. I am, 
therefore, strongly opposed to emancipation, in every shape 
and degree, unless accompanied by colonization." 

Coloni-zation is, in fact, the only reliance in this great ques- 
tion. Without it, no plan of abolition can be effectual for 
the security of the whites, or the good of the blacks ; since 
the permanence of the latter, free or enslaved, within the 
abode, or the neighbourhood of the former, is the main dan- 
ger. Colonization is, no doubt, itself attended with appalling 
difficulties. The aspect of these difficulties prevented the 
legislature of Virginia from adopting, at an early period, a bill 
prepared by a conmiittee, for gradual emancipation in that 
state. It was thought, and not without reason, that to plant 
a nation of negroes in the American territoiy, would be to lay 
the foundation of intestine wars which could terminate only 
in their extirpation or final expulsion ; that to assign them a 
country beyond the settlements of the whites, would be to put 
them on a forlorn hope against the Indians. The expense of 



ST-AVE TRADE. 3| 

their transportation and establishment presented itself, also, SECT. ; 
as an obstacle little short of insurmountable.* s.-'~v^ 

The expedient of transplanting the free blacks to the coast 
of Africa ; of opening there a receptacle for our black popula- 
tion at large ; occurred to the Virginia legislature in the be- 
ginning of the present century. At the solicitation of that 
bodv, the federal government endeavoured, in 1802, through 
Mr. King, the American minister in London, to negotiate with 
the Sierra Leone Company, for the admission of the American 
blacks into their colony. But the application did not suc- 
ceed ; and the same fiite attended a similar attempt which 
was made with Portugal, to obtain an establishment for them 
within her South American dominions. 
' While the British slave trade continued, no hope could be 
entertained of the prosperity of such an establishment on the 
coast of Africa. " To account," said the Edinburgh Review, 
in 1805, " for the failure of the Sierra Leone plan, it is quite 
sufficient to reflect, that it was undertaken in 1791, on the 
supposition then so natural, of the slave trade being about to 
cease ; — that, instead of this expectation being realized, the 
traffic in question increased daily and hourly in growth ; that 
the compan}' in vain besought Parliament to check the trade, 
at least in the narrow district where the colony was planted.'' 
In sending our negroes thither, we should only have been fur- 
nishing aliment for that insatiable passion which occasioned 
; the introduction of the race into our own country. Constantly 
si expecting a rupture with Great Britain, or actually engaged 
I in hostilities with her, from the period of her abolition of the 
{ slave trade, it is only of late that we could again look to the 

■ coast of Africa. The project of making a settlement in that 
quarter, for the purpose of gradually restoring our black popu- 
lation to their native region, and thus extirpating the slavery 
which we detest, and fear, has been revived. As soon after 

■ the conclusion of the peace in 1815, as our political circum- 
stances would permit, a society, styled the American Coloni- 
zation Societ}-, was formed in the south, on the most liberal 
plan, and under the most distinguished auspices. It enjoys the 

■ particular patronage of the legislature of Virginia ; has the 
countenance and aid of the federal government; and appears 
to be viewed with an eye of favour by the slave-holding states 
in general. Auxiliary societies have been organized in differ- 
ent parts of the country, and will, probably, multiply fast, and 
excite every where an interest in the important object, whicit 

Tucker's Notes on Blackstone. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

^ ^- will greatly facilitate its success. The principal society has 
already caused the western coast of Africa to be explored, 
and is sanguine as to the practicability of the plan of settle- 
ment in some district of that coast. I must confess that I 
have no hope of its success. The British government, what- 
ever may be its professions, will not allow any establishment 
to thrive and be perpetuated, which may interfere with its 
particular views in that direction. As long, moreover, as the 
slave trade is prosecuted in its present frightful extent, or, 
indeed, until it shall be contracted within very narrow li- 
mits, no colony which we may form, can be prevented from 
becoming, either its prey, or one of its factories. The acting 
attorney-general of Sierra Leone declared in 1812, on the 
trial of certain persons for an infraction of the British aboli- 
tion laws, that the town itself. Sierra Leone, was " the heart 
from which all the arteries and veins of the slave-trading 
system had for years been animated and supplied."* The 
directors of the African Institution, in their ansAvers to the 
queries of Lord Castlereagh, already cited, hold the follow- 
ing language. " Sien-a Leone, and its immediate neighbour- 
hood, may be considered as the only part of the African coast 
where plans of improvement can be pursued without imme- 
diately encountering the malignant influence of the slave 
trade. It is almost necessary, therefore,- to confine within that 
sphere, at least for the present, any direct efforts made for 
the civilization and improvement of Africa. Even the esta- 
blishment formed in the Rio Pongas, for the instruction of the 
natives, it is feared, must be withdrawn, in consequence of 
the revival of the slave trade." 

Though, from the commercial jealousy of Great Britain, 
the prevalence of the slave trade, or our liability to be involved 
in wars with the European nations, which would interrupt \ 
our communication with Africa, we should be obliged to with- 
dra\Y our aims from that continent, the plan of colonization 
may, I think, still be pursued on our own, with equal conve- 
nience and less risk of final miscarriage. Lwill not undertake 
to point out the spot for its execution"; this does not belong to 
my subject ; but there cannot be wanting a spot within our 
reach, free from all invincible objections. The object is of 
infinite importance j it calls for the earnest attention of the" 
whole Union, and the unanimous agency of the federal 



* Sec Dr. Thorpe's View of the present Increase of the Slave Trade, 



SLAVE TRADE. ^ 

government, " The alarming danger," says General Harper,* SECT 
"■ of cherishing in our bosom a distinct nation, which can ne- v^-^^ 
yer become incorporated with us, while it rapidly increases 
in numbers ; a nation which must ever be hostile to us, from 
feeling and interest; the danger of such a nation in our 
bosom, need not be pointed out to any reflecting mind. It 
speaks not only to our understanding, but to our very senses." 

23. In defiance of the lessons of history and of the true 
philosophy of the human mind, the British writers have in- 
sisted, that freedom must be altogether an empty name in 
the country where domestic slavery is established. Their 
doctrine would deprive Greece and Rome of the distinction, 
upon which the admiration of mankind for those republics 
has been chiefly built. Freedom would be just horn, as it 
were, in the world. "In every age and country," says Hal- 
lam, in his History of the Middle Ages, "until times com- 
paratively recent, personal servitude appears to have been the 
lot of a large, perhaps, the greater portion of our species. 
We lose a good deal of our sympathy with the spirit of free- 
dom in Greece and Rome, when the importunate recollection 
occurs to us, of the tasks which might be enjoined, and the 
punishments which might be inflicted, without control either 
of law or opinion, by the keenest patriot of the Comitia, or 
the Council of Five Thousand. A similar, though less 
powerful feeling, will often force itself on the mind, when 
we read the history of the middle ages." 

The institution of slavery in the ancient republics was at- 
tended with every circumstance which might appear incom- 
patible with the prevalence of true liberty, or of the moral and 
political virtues of the highest class. f But who can deny to 
Greece and Rome an ample share of those honours ? " We 
feel," says Ferguson, in his Essay on the History of Civil 



* Letter to the American Colonization Society. 

f " In the ancient states," says the Scottish philosopher, Millar, in his Ori- 
gin of Itanks, " so celebrated upon account of their free g-overnment, the 
bulk of their mechanics and labouring people were denied the common privi- 
leges of men, and treated upon the footing of inferior animals. In propor- 
tion to the opulence and rehnement of those n.itions, the number of their 
slaves was increased, and the grievances to which they were subjected be- 
came the moi-e intolerable." 

" Allowing five persons to each family, the Athenian slaves exceeded tho 
freemen in the proportion of between two and three to one. In the most 
flourishing periods of Rome, when luxury was carried to so amazing a pitch, 
the proportion of the inhabitants reduced into sevvitiide was in allprobabi!iW 
greater." 

Vol. I.— 3 E 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

Society, " the injustice of the institution of slavery at Sparta. 
We suffer for the helot ; but we think only of the superior 
order of men in this state, when we attend to that elevation 
and magnanimity of spirit, for which danger had no terror 
interest no means to corrupt j when we consider them ab 
friends or as citizens, we are apt to forget, like themselves, 
that slaves have a title to be treated like men." 

Hallam, in the v/ork which I have quoted above, has con- 
tended for the freedom of the English constitution during 
the days of English villeinage, and ascribed to the commons 
of those days a proud sense and tenaciousness of equality in 
civil rights. In what manner the villeins were treated, and 
in what light viewed, will be understood from the following 
passage of this author. 

" By a very harsh statute in the reign of Richard II, no 
servant or labourer could depart, even at the expiration of 
his service, from the hundred in which he lived, without 
permission under the king's seal ; nor might any one who 
had been bred to husbandry, till twelve years old, exercise 
any other calling. A few years afterwards, the commons 
petitioned that villeins might not put their children to school, 
in order to advance them by the church; 'and this for the 
honour of all the freemen of the kingdom,' In the same par- 
liament they complained, that villeins fly to cities and 
boroughs where their masters cannot recover them, and 
prayed that the lords might seize their villeins in such places, 
without regard to the franchises thereof."* 

If the traits which I have cited in the second section of 
this volume, from the early political history of the southern 
btates, were not enough to convince the mother country of 
the compatibility of the love and possession of the broadest 
civil liberty, with the institution of domestic servitude, the 
part which they took as colonies in asserting and maintaining 
the rights of America against her scheme of usurpation, 
ought to have dispelled all her doubts on the subject. One 
of her statesmen, at least, an adept in the science of human 
nature, did not remain in error ; but placed the question be- 
fore her in the just and full light, as an admonition against 
perseverance in her perilous career. It is strange that it 
should be necessary to repeat, for the instruction of some of 
her most witted writers of the present day, the following pas- 
sage of Burke's speech on the conciliacion with America. 
"There is a circumstance attending these southern Ameri- 

* Vol. ii. c. viii. 



SLAVE TRADE. 4.(i 

can colonies, which makes the spirit of liberty still more high SECT. \ 
and haughty there than in those to the northward. It is that, 
in Virginia and the Carolinas, they have avast multitude of 
slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those 
who are free, are by far the most proud and jealous of their 
freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a 
kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, 
as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad 
and general as the air, may be united with rnuch abject toil^ 
■with great misery^ xvith all the exterior of servitude^ liberty 
looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and 
liberal. I do not mean to commend the superior morality of 
this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in 
it; but I cannot alter the iiature of man. The fact is so ; and 
these people of the southern colonies are much more strong- 
ly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to 
liberty than those of the northward. Such were all the an- 
cient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such 
in our days were the Poles ; and such will be all masters of 
slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the 
haughtiness of domination combines vrith the spirit of free- 
dom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible." 

All our experience in America, since the revolution, con- 
firms the opinion of the orator ; or, at least, assures us, that 
the citizens of the slave-holding states understand quite as 
well, and cherish as fondly, the principles of republicanism, 
as those of the other members of our union. Bryan Edwards 
has indicated in the character and demeanour of the West 
Indians, what we find universal among oiu- south and south- 
western brethren. " Of the character," says this author, 
*' common to the white residents of the West Indies, it ap- 
pears to me tliat the leading feature is an independent spirit, 
and a display of conscious equality, throughout all ranks and 
conditions. The poorest white person seems to consider him- 
self nearly on a level with the richest, and, emboldened by 
this idea, approaches his employer with extended hand, and 
a freedom which, in the countries of Europe, is seldom dis- 
played by men in the lower orders of life towards their supe- 
riors. It is not difficult to trace the origin of this principle. 
It arises, without doubt, from the pre-eminence and distinc- 
tion which are necessarily attached even to the complexion 
of a white man, in a country where the complexion, gene- 
rally speaking, distinguishes freedom from slaveiy."'"= 

* History of the West Indies, ch. i. b. J v. 



NEGRO SLAVKRY AND 

I may apply in the same way the following representations 
which Edwards makes in continuation. " Possibly too, the 
climate itself, by increasing sensibility, contributes to create 
an impatience of subordination. But, whatever may be th'. 
cause of this consciousness of self-importance in the West 
Indian character, the consequences resulting from it are, on 
the whole, beneficial. If it sometimes produces an ostenta- pi 
tious pride, and a ridiculous affectation of splendour, it more ^ 
frequently awakens the laudable propensities of our nature — 
frankness, sociability, benevolence, and generosity. In no 
part of the globe is the virtue of hospitality more generally 
prevalent, than in the British sugar islands. The gates o'" 
the planter are always open to the reception of his guests 
To be a stranger is of itself a sufficient introduction." 

24. There is some plausibility in the theory of the Edin 
burgh Review concerning the effects of commanding slaves 
upon the heart and the morals. But it is not established by 
our experience, as true in the general. The native citizen 
of the slave-holding state displays, specifically, as rriuch sen- 
sibility, justice, and stedfastness, in all the domestic and social 
relations, as the European, of whatever country. He is as 
strongly influenced by the ties of kindred and friendship 5 as 
open to the impressions which attemper and refine our nature. 
He has had a large share in the formation and administration 
of our institutions and laws ; in all the executive offices, civil 
and military ; and we have never discovered in him any parti- 
cular proneness to tyranny or inhumanity; a torpid conscience, 
or an imperfect sense of equity. In none of the nobler vir- 
tues and qualities has he ever proved deficient, in the compa- 
rison with the individual born and fashioned among freemen 
alone. If there be any thing contradistinguishing in his man- 
ners and disposition, it is certainly not ferocity or even harsh- 
ness. The planter of our old southern states has always been 
rather remarkable for his urbanity and facilitv, as well as for 
the dignity and liberality of his sentiments. Morals, it is said, 
are more loose inthe slave-holding states. If we admitted this 
to be the case, it would by no means follow that the institution 
of slavery is the principal cause of the relaxation. An original 
difference of religious institutions, and maxims of conduct; of 
soil and climate ; of modes of livelihood and materials of 
traffic ; of circumstances attending the connexion with the 
mother country ; might give the same result. Domestic sla- 
very continues in Germany and the northern parts of Europe ; 
it has disappeared from the southern ; but the dissoluteness of 



SLAVE TilADE. ^ 

these is notoriously greater. Hungary is more in the odour SKOT , 
of sanctity than the kingdom of Naples. The institution in ^--""^^ 
tjuestionis to be abhorred, on account of the violence which 
it offers to human rights, and the abjection to which it 
reduces human nature : a priori it would seem to exert a fatal 
influence on the character of the master; but our experi- 
ence, at least, I repeat it, would not justify us in adopting 
the theory. 

When we investigate the dispositions and morals of the 
European nations, it is not with the "lowest and least" of 
them alone, but with the highest and greatest that we ven- 
ture to compare the white population of our slave-holding 
states. It is not unknown to us, that in Russia the number 
of slaves held as property, and subject to absolute v/ill, is 
sextuple that of our negroes :* That, in the other parts of 
Europe, where the institution of slavery does not exist, there 
are other institutions generating a hundred fold more vice, 
misery, and debasement, than we have ever witnessed in the 
same compass in America. 

25, The laws of the slave-holding states do not furnish a 
criterion for the character of their present white population, 
or the condition of the slaves. Those laws were enacted, for 
the most part, in seasons of particular alarm, produced by 
attempts at insurrection ; or when the black inhabitants were 
doubly formidable by reason of the greater proportion which 
they bore to the whites, in number, and of the savage state 
and unhappy mood in which they arrived from Africa. The 
real measure of danger was not understood but after long- 
experience ; and in the interval, the precautions taken, were 
naturally of the most jealous and rigorous aspect. That these- 
have not been all repealed, or that some of them should be 

. still enforced, is not inconsistent with an improved spirit of 
legislation ; since the evils against which they were intended 
to guard are yet the subject of just apprehension, England 

^inundated South Carolina for instance, with barbarians, and 
now reproaches her wit;h the measures which she took for 
her security against their brute force. 

There is no Code Noir which surpasses in atrocity that 



* See tlie Appendix to Storcl^'s Course of Political Economy, St. Peters- 

!uirg, 1815. 'l'lii.s wi-iter states, tliat in 1782, the number of male peasants, 

or serfs, of tiie crown, amounted to 4,675,000 ; that they could be li-red out, 

•sold, given away, &c. ; and the number of male slaves, the property of sub- 

' •'^ts, h.r> ostin^-^'^'"'^ ■■': ^ f^rn(\(v\. '-nnally at the disposal of the masters. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

^ ^" part of the British statute book relating toRoman Catholics.* 
''**^ What Englishman will allow us to make this, as it stood be- 
fore Sir George Saville's act, or even as it now stands, the 
index to British humanity and justice? Acts of proscription 
are still suffered to remain in terrorcm^ ready for a barely 
possible emergence. " The laws against the Catholics," 
said the Bishop of Worcester, in the House of Lords, (May 
19th, 1819,) "had hitherto been administered tenderly and 
sparingly; they would, doubtless, continue to be so ad- 
ministered, unless some event should occur to render their strict 
enforcement necessary.'''' 

Since the revolution, most of the southern codes have been 
softened in regard to the slave police ; and the murder of a 
negro is now capital throughout our union, except in one 
state. I have already quoted the assertion of Dr. Dickson, 
that "the harshness of the slave laws is but little softened by 
the lenity of the general practice in the British sugar islands." 
The reverse of this is notoriously true of the American 
states. The patrol laws, for example, of South Carolina, 
which contain the most oppressive of her regulations, are 
rarely put in execution. In Virginia, the interdict laid, at 
the time of what is called Gabriel's insurrection, upon the 
assemblage of negroes, — a " seditious meetings bill," like 
that passed by the British parliament in 1817,j — is wholly 
neglected. No restraint in this respect is imposed upon 
them by their masters, except such as may be necessary for 
purposes of domestic order and labour. 

Before our revolution, the negro slavery of this country was, 
as we have seen, acknowledged to be universally less severe 
than that of any other part of the world. It has undergoi^e, 
since that event, a great and striking amelioration. To this 
fact, all who have witnessed and compared the former and 
present lot of the slaves of our southern states, bear the most 
confident testimony. What was once deemed a moderate 
treatment, would now be a rigid one ; and the tolerated rigour 



* "Laws," says IVIr. Burke, in his speech at Bristol, previous to tlie e 
tion, " were made in tliis kingdom against Papists as bloody as any of th 
which had been enacted by the Popisji princes and states; and where tli 
laws were not bloody, they were woi-se ; as they \^ ere slow, cruel, outrage 
on ovir nature, and kept men alive, only to insult in their persons eri^ry 
of tlie rigiits and feelings of humajiity." 

f By the standing Riot Act of fcingland, not more than twelve persons 
allowed to continue together, after it has been read by the magistrate. L 
Castlereagh said in Parliament in 1817, tliat "there was not on the slat 
book a lavv' which had been more beueticial to the country." 



SLAVE TRADE. ^ 

of the first period could find no countenance at the present. SECT..- 
The negro has gained nearly as much by our separation from ^-'''^^•' 
Great Britain as the white. The causes of this undeniable 
fact are various and obvious. 

With the importation of the Africans, ceased much of the 
dread, which the slave population inspired, while it was con- 
tinually receiving large accessions of strangers. At this time 
by far the greater part of the slaves of the old states, have 
been born and brought up by the side of the whites. In pro- 
portion as the indigenous character predominated, the pro- 
pensity on the one hand to shake off the yoke, and the mis- 
trust on the other, which occasioned its aggravation, regu- 
larly diminished. Another circumstance tended to render 
the slaves in a much less degree objects of terror, and to 
make room for the' kindlier dispositions of our nature to 
operate ; the whites came soon to exceed them considerably 
in number, from emigration added to natural increase. 
Brougham has speculated in his Colonial Policy, in confoi'- 
mity to the facts in our case. "There can be little doubt," 
he says, " that the fatal disproportion of the two classes, the 
great proportion of the imported negroes, and the cruel treat- 
ment of the slaves in general, would be all materially altered 
by any revolution that should separate the colonies from the 
parent state, while the more rigorous administration of an 
independent community, would lessen the danger arising 
from such a mixture of negroes, or such abuses of the slave 
system as might still remain." 

Not onlv does the proportion which the slaves bear to the 
free part of the community, contribute to determine their con- 
dition, but, in general, the greater or smaller numbers in which 
they belong to individuals. The abolition of entails and the 
rule of primogeniture, together with the evaporation of those 
old prejudices which fettered parental affection in the testa- 
mentary distribution of estates, have, since the establishment 
of our independence, led to the subdivision of every kind of 
property, in the southern communities. The negroes, being- 
more widely apportioned, exist in smaller bands, and are of 
Course more under the immediate care and inspection of the 
masters, in whose eyes they must at the same time have, 
singly, more value. The interest of the master in the welfare 
of the slave is not to be urged as a full security against ill 
usage ; but it cannot fail to have a considerable influence; and 
it has been constantly increasing from the enhancement ot 
the price of negroes, occasioned by the demand for their la- 
bour in the new states, and the insufiiclency of the supplies 



NEGRO SLAVERY AXa 

which the illicit importation from Africa can furnisli. The 
' more abundant production of food, the increase of wealth 
with the planters, and more strictness of principle and regu- 
larity' of habits, (for these too can be proved to be among 
the effects of the revolution,) have redounded likewise to 
the advantage of the slaves. 

It is not to be doubted, that the political discussions, which 
preceded our revolution, the spirit of the institutions which 
grew out of it, and the diffusion of education, excited a 
greater sensibility to human rights; a quicker sympathy 
with human sufferings; a more general liberality of sentiment; 
and a higher pride of character, in the slave-holding part of 
our population. Hence a new public opinion sprung up, re- 
quiring a system of lenity and generosity in the government 
and sustentation of the slaves ; and repressive, not only of 
barbarity, but of habitual severity in any marked degree, 
and of what may be equivalent in its effects, habitual indif- 
ference and estrangement. These abuses have become dis- 
reputable ; they expose the man who is guilty of them to the 
disdain and reprobation of his neighbours ; and in this way 
are more efficaciously checked than they could be by any 
legislative enactments. The master who should deprive his 
negro of his pecultum^ — the produce of his poultry house or 
his little garden ; who should force him to work on holidays 
or at night ; who should deny him the common recreations, or 
leave him without shelter or provision in his old age, would 
incur the aversion of the community, and raise obstacles to 
the advancement of his own interests and external aims. 

26. The American negro slavery is almost wholly free from 
two of the grievances which characterize that of the West 
Indies — under-feeding- and over-work'mg. With regard to the 
great article of food, the American negroes are, assuredly, 
better supplied than the free labourers of most parts of 
Europe. Flesh meat is not attainable for the latter in the 
same quantity which is commonly given to the first ; it would 
seem, (on this head I refer to the quotations which I have 
made from the Quarterly Review,*) not to be attainable at a'll 
for the poorer classes of Great Britain and Ireland. In respc 
to clothing and lodging, the comparison would give neai 
the same result. On the score of fuel, the want of which occ 
sions so much suffering in particular counties of Great Britai 
and, as to the point of labour also, the advantage is greal 

* See page ^'^S. 



SLAVE TRADE. 4 

on the side of the American negroes. I cannot, here, SECT.;; 
enter into the details of the system, upon which they are v^'"n'' 
worked on the southern plantations ; but I can say of it, that 
it involves nothing like the same intensity, duration, or con- 
tinuity of exertion, which would appear to be indispensable 
in Great Britain, in almost all the lower walks of mechanical 
industry, for the mere support of animal life. The average 
number of hours of daily toil exceeds there, by nearly one 
half, that which is exacted under the system just mentioned. 
A few extracts from recent debates of Parliament will deter- 
tnine the validity of this assertion. 

In the House of Commons, (April 29th, 1818,) " Mr. 
Peel said, in Manchester alone, 11,600 children were em- 
ployed in the cotton factories, and the average time of labour 
thirteen hours a day. Most of these poor children, after the 
thirteen hours of labour, were obliged to go to school to learn 
to write." 

" Sir Robert Peel said, it was proved that in Lancashire, 
children were employed fifteen hours a day, and after any 
stoppage, from five in the morning until ten in the evening, 
seventeen hours^ and this often for three weeks at a time. On 
Sunday they were employed from six in the morning until 
twelve in cleaning the machinery.'* 

" Mr. Peter Moore said, (May 13th, 1819,) in the town 
which he had the honour to represent, (Coventry,) there 
were five classes of manufacturers, each working nineti/six 
hours in the week, or sixteen hours in the daj'^. The first of 
these classes gain, in return for their labour, ten shillings a 
week, or two pence halfpenny an hour, which is but a very 
trifling share of what they were formerly in the habit of ac- 
quiring. The second class gained 5s. Qd. a week. The third 
2*. 9t/., which is labouring four hours for five farthings. The 
two remaining classes receive 2s. and 1*. 6d. a week, which 
is working at the rate of seven and nine hours for a single 
halfpenny." 

" Mr. "Mansfield said, (March 25th, 1819,) that he had at- 
tended a committee that day, before whom a case was proved 
of a great number of labourers, who, by working fifteen or 
sixteen hours a day, could not earn above seven shillings 
per week." 

The physical condition of the American negro is, on the 

whole, not compai-atively alone, but positively good, and he 

is exempt from those racking anxieties — the exacerbations of 

despair, to which the English manufacturer and peasant are 

VoT.. L--r> F 



I NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

^'^' I- subject in the pursuit of their pittance.* The old age of the 
negro, in Virginia and the Carolinas particularly, is by no 
means one of cheerlessness or destitution. He is not tasked 
beyond his strength ; he is sure of nutriment ; he remains in 
the midst of his comrades ; and, in most cases, has a family 
about him with the feelings and attractions of legitimacy ; for, 
the polygamy, and promiscuous intercourse between the 
sexes, which crown the abominations of West India slavery, 
are not common features in the North American. 

We have it upon the authority of the Quarterly Review, 
that the great body of the British people " work with the 
prospect of want and pauperism before their eyes as xvhat 
must be their destiny at last ;" that " in the road in which the 
English labourer 7nust travel, the poor house is the last stage 
on the way to the grave."-) If we are entitled to form an 
opinion from the Parliamentary Reports, — no mean authority, 
— this final stage of the English labourer is worse than any 
stage in the career of the American negro. The *' victim of 
American barbarity" finds in his " quarter" comforts which 
the tenant of the British poor house might envy, and can ne- 
ver hope to enjoy. 

From the minutes of evidence before the parliamentaiy com- 
mittee on the state of the poor, it would appear, that the treat- 
ment which they experience in the receptacles provided for 
them, is wretched and barbarous almost beyond credibility. 
By way of example, the witnesses stated that in one room 28 
feet long by 15 wide, there were two and twenty persons 

* I appeal to the petitions presented to Parliament by bodies of ten 
and twenty thousand agriculturists and manufacturers at a time. The fol- 
lowing representation, made by Mr. Brougham in the House of Commons, 
may be taken as a specimen of their condition. 

" Mr. Brougham observed that the weavers, in consequence of the reduc- 
tion of their wages, were comj)eJled first, to part for their sustenance with 
all their trifling property by piece-meal, from the little furniture of their 
cottages to the very bedding and clothes tliat used to cover them from the 
v.eather. They struggled on with hunger, and went to sleep at night-fall, 
upon the calculation that if they worked an hour or two later, they might in- 
deed earn tiiree halfpence more, one of which must be paid for a candle, but 
then the clear gain of a penny would be too dearly bought, and leave them 
less able to work the next day. To such a frightud nicety of reckoning are 
human beings reduced, treating themselves like mere machines, and ba- 
lancing the produce against the tear and wear, so as to obtain the maximunri 
that their phi^sical powers can be made to yield ! At length, however, the)' 
nuist succumb; the work -house closes their dismal prospect; or, with a re- 
luctance that makes tlieir lot a thousand times more pitiable, they submit 
to take parish relief; and, to sustain life, pai't with tlie independent spirit, 
the best bii-tliriglit of an English peasant." 

f See page 287. 



SLAVE TRADE. ^ 

sleeping ; that Idiots lived promiscuously with the other pau- SECT, 
pers ; that the fowls and chickens were kept in the pantries v.^~v- 
where the food for the poor was kept ; that they were in ge- 
neral extremeh' ill clothed, &c. The parishes contracted with 
individuals for keeping their poor at so much ahead, and made 
them thus victims of avaricious speculation. It was shown 
that one individuaiy^/rwz^rt'the poor of no less than forty pa- 
rishes, receiving six shillings a week for each pauper; and 
spending of course, for the accommodation of his guests, as 
little as possible of this stipend. London had eighteen thou- 
sand poor inthe difFer'entwork-houses inEngland. Irefertothe 
Report of the House of Commons on Mendicity, for a general 
picture of the condition of the paupers in those work-houses. 
" Your committee," says the Report, " cannot hesitate to 
suggest that there are not in the country a set of beings more 
immediately requiring the protection of the legislature than 
the persons in a state of lunacy and mendicit}^, a very large 
proportion ofxvhom are entirely neglected by their friends and 
relations. If the treatment of those in the middling or in the 
lower classes of life, shut up in hospitals, private mad-houses, 
or parish work-houses., is looked at, your committee are per- 
suaded that a case cannot be found, where the necessity for 
a remedy is more urgent." 

The details of the Report recall to mind, but with strokes of 
tenfold patheticalness, the touching lament of the poet Crabbe: 
" Then too I own, it grieves me to beliold 

Those ever virtuous, helpless now and old, 

B}' all for care and industry approv'd, 

For truth resjiecied, and for temper lov'd ; - I 

And who, by sickness and misfortune try'd, j 

Gave Want its worth and Poverty its pride : 

I own it prieves me to behold them sent 

From their old home; 'tis pain, 'tis punishment. 

To leave each scene familiar, every face, 

For a new people and a stranger race : 

For those who, sunk in sloth and dead to shame. 

From scenes of guilt with daring spirit came ; 

Men, just as guileless, at such manners start. 

And bless their God that time has fenc'd their heart, 

Confirm'd their virtue and expell'd the fear 

Of vice in minds so simple and sincere. 
Here the good pauper, losing all the pi-aise 

By worthy deeds acquir'd in better days, I 

Breathes a few months, then to liis chamber led, 1 

Expires while strangers prattle around his bed."* 

27. The religious instruction of the slaves cannot be said 
to be an object of immediate care with the majority, or any 

* See Note X. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

great proportion, of the American masters ; but they are far 
from refusing them access to it, in any form. It is left at the 
option of the negroes to frequent the churches and meeting 
houses, which, in the country, have universally a compart- 
ment for their occupation. The old, or infirm, or those whose 
conduct has been exemplary, are indulged with horses to 
ride to sermons. They have, in numerous instances, houses 
of worship for their separate use, where individuals of their 
own number, empowered by the white elders, preach, and 
discharge the other functions of the ministry. Itinerant mis- 
sionaries of the gospel have formed congregations of them in 
almost every district ; and though the Christian lecture cannot 
be otherwise than rare, and the attendance upon it loose, yet 
enough is done to leave a salutary impression, and to make 
it utterly inconsistent with the truth to say of them, what the 
Quarterly Review says — no doubt with great truth — of two- 
thirds of the lower order of people in all the large cities and 
towns of England, and of " the greatest part of her manufac- 
turing populace, and her miners and colliers," — that they live 
as utterly ignorant of the doctrines and duties of Christianity^ 
and are as erraiit and uncoriverted Pagans^ as if they had ex- 
isted hi the -wildest part of Africa?''^ 

South Carolina has had a great share of the obloquy of the 
British travellers, on this subject. Their outcry will not be si- 
lenced, but the friends of justice and humanity will be gratified, 
by the following facts which I extract from an official Report, 
dated the 14th June, 1819, of a committee of the Board of 
Managers of the Bible Society of Charleston, respecting the 
progress and present state of Religion in South Carolina. 
*' From the best information the committee have been able to 
obtain, they find that the Gospel is now preached to about six 
hundred and thirteen congregations of Protestant Christians; 
that there are about two hundred and ninety-two ordained 
clergymen who labour amongst them, besides a considerable 
number of domestic missionaries, devoted and supported by 
each denomination, who dispense their labours to such of the 
people as remain destitute of an established ministry. From 
actual returns, and cautious estimates where such returns have 
not been obtained, it appears that in the state there are about 
46,000 Protestants who receive the holy communion of the 
Lord's supper. In the city of Charleston, upwards of one- 
fourth of the communicants are slaves or free people of colour : 
and it is supposed that in the other parts of the state, the 

• See page 288. 



SLAVE TRADE. .] 

proportion of such communicants may be estimated at about SECT, 
one-eighth. In every church they are freely admitted to attend^ 
on Divine service — in most of the churches distinct accommo- 
dations are provided for them, and the clergy in general make 
it a part of their pastoral care to devote frequent and stated 
seasons for the religious instruction of catechumen from 
amongst the black population." 

This train of affairs in South Carolina is somewhat more 
creditable than that in the British West Indies, whei-e scarce- 
ly any thing has been done for the conversion of the negroes. 
If we did not see by the statements of the Quarterly Review 
and the parliamentary papers, to what a deplorable extent 
the initiation of the people of England into Christianity has 
been neglected,* we should find it difficult to believe that 
her established church had, in the course of nearly two cen- 
turies, attempted nothing towards the regeneration of the 
millions of heathens who have been held in bondage in her 
islands. To this effect, however, is the testimony of all the 
best authorities concerning the affairs of those islands. Mo- 
ravian missionaries alone had sought to introduce the light 
of the Gospel among a population requiring its lessons and 
consolations, more, perhaps, than any other on earth. At 
length the late Bishop Porteus founded a " Society for the 
conversion of negro slaves," which has been nearly inopera- 
tive. With respect to the British planters themselves, it is 
asserted in a recent work entitled to full credit, that " there 
is not, and never was, either worship or instruction of any 
kind provided by them for their numerous slaves. "f The 
number of negroes in the British West Indies, baptized and 
endoctrinated, bears no assignable proportion to those so 
circumstanced in the United States. 

28. The British philanthropists, in making their appeal in 
favour of the former, have seemed to consider every thing 
as gained, if only " the humblest and coarsest necessaries of 
/i/e, the protection of laiv^ and the assistance of labouring cattle^ 
could be secured to them.:}: It is long since so much and more 
has been secured to the great majority of the North American 
negroes ; and the irresistible proof offers itself in the increase 
of their numbers. The Edinburgh Reviewers would, with 
all their ingenuity, find it difficult to reconcile the aspersions 



* See Note Y. 

t Letters on the West Indies, by James Walker, London, 1818. Letter VI. 

4 Dickson's Mitigation of Slavery. Preface. 



NEGRO SLAVERY A>!D 

r I. which they cast upon the American as the murderer and scour- 
''>^ ger of slaves^ with the fact that, according to the rate of in- 
crease from 1790 to 1810, the number of years required for 
the duplication of our slave population is only 25.99. The 
allowance to be made on account of importations, would not 
extend this term to twenty-eight at the utmost, for the natu- 
ral increase. The population of Great Britain, as appears by 
authentic documents, does not double in less than eighty 
years.* Even in the most unhealthy districts of South Caro- 
lina, where rice is cultivated, and the labour of the negroes 
comparatively severe, they do not diminish in numbers. A 
benevolent practice prevails among some of the rice planters, 
of paying to the overseers, in addition to their regular 
emoluments, a certain sum per head, (usually ten dollars) 
i for the annual increase ; and it has proved no insignificant 
source of revenue to the latter. 

" The increase of the American slaves and people of co- 
lour," says the Quarterly Review of Mav, 1819, "appears to-: 
have been \n a much greater proportion than that of the white 
population, and it is not improbable, that in a few generations, 
the negro race will exceed\S\Q. whites in all except the eastern 
states. The number of slaves in the United States, is now 
above two millions, and including the free negroes, the black 
population of America, constitutes more than one-fourth part 
of the whole." If all this were accurate, it would refute at 
once the tales which the orthodox journal has so often repeat- 
ed con amore^ respecting the treatment of that black popula- 
tion. It is marked, however, by the usual ignorance, or spirit 
of exaggeration, where America is in question. Our census 
of 1810 teaches, that, according to the ratio of increase for 
the twenty years preceding, the number of years required for 
the duplication of the whites was 22.48 ; and that required 
for the slaves, as I have mentioned, 25.99. The whites in- 
creased from 1790 to 1810, 85.26 per cent. ; the slaves 70.75. 
The mei*e natural increase is not, however, shown exactly 
by this calculation. We should deduct the annual addition 
made to the numbers of both from without, which would 
probably leave the proportion the same. The whole number 
of slaves in 1810, was 1,191,364; and of free people of co- 
lour, 186,466. Together they did not equal one-fourth of 



• "It appears by Mr. Pickman's tables," says the Quarterly Review, "that 
llic population of England and Wales has nearly doubled in the last hvndred 
years," — a term nearly four times longer than that required for the duplica- 
tion of the American negroes. 



SLAVE TRADE. 

the white population, which was, 5,862,092; nor make butSECl 
little more than one-sixth of the whole. At present, the 
proportion must be still less, as the ratio of increase for the 
white population is undoubtedly greater.* In 1810, the white 
population of the nine slave-holding states of that period, 
amounted to 2,153,455; that of the coloured, free and en- 
slaved, to 1,242,862. The census of 1820 will give three 
millions atleast of white population in the slave-holding coun- 
tries of the union; and not more than 1,700,000 of black, 
allowing for the addition made to the number of the last hv 
illicit importation. Should we admit the ratio of increase to 
be the same for both, the political arithmetician of the Quar- 
terly Review would find it difficult to solve the problem, in 
how many generations " the negro race will exceed the whites," 
especially if he be confined to his own limitation — " in all 
except the easteim states," under which denomination he 
could not mean to include Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois ; con- 
taining nearly a million of whites, without the alloy of a 
slave. 

29. The removal of considerable numbers of the slaves 
from the old slave-holding states, to the south and south-west, 
tends materially to increase the relative majority of the whites 
in those states, and is likely to continue, so as greatly to lessen 
the danger to which they may be held to be exposed. The 
slaves emigrate either with their original owners, or with per- 
sons of the same or an adjoining state, to whom they are sold, 
and who purchase them for their own use ; or with the negro 
traders^ so called. The greater number go with the two 
first descriptions of persons, to a more fruitful soil ; to a cli- 
mate equally or more favourable to their constitutions: alto- 
gether they suffer but little, if at all, by the change of position. 
They are not, in general, committed to a new master, vv-ho is 
unknoAvn ; or who does not possess the best testimonials as to 
his views, and the respectability of his character. It had been 
long the practice to sell the intractable slaves, and such as were 
guilty of crimes, to the traders^ who disposed of them to the 
planters of South Carolina and Georgia. This disposition 
even of culprits may scandalize the writers of the Quarterly 
Review ; but it is not quite so harsh as that of selling them to 

* The operation of it may be understood from the following' statement. 

In 1790, for every 100 free persons, there were 22.13 slaves. 

In 1800 - ditto 20.29 do. 

In 1810 - ditto - • - - - - 19.69 do. 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

' !• the Bey of Tripoli* would have been ; nor worse than the 
"^^^ transportation of the British convicts to Botany Bay, ac- 
cording to the description of it which I have already given 
in the language of members of Parliament ;f or to the cha- 
racter of it which is implied in the following extract from 
the volume of Parliamentary Debates for the year 1792. 
*' Mr. Fox noticed the mention that had been made of the 
transportation of convicts to Botany Bay, and said, that the 
hardships of the passage would appear less extraordinary^ 
when it was known, that the transportation was undertaken 
by slave merchants, and slave captains, and that a part 
of the misery of the convicts was the effect of slave fetters 
being used instead of those employed in general for con- 
victs.":}: 

The proportion of slaves of good character, whom the tra- 
ders obtain, is small comparatively : The severance or disper- 
sion of families is by no means so common as might be sup- 
posed from the tales of the English travellers. This evil is 
produced in England in a hundred instances to one that oc- 
curs among our negroes, and with tenfold affliction, by the 
extensive emigration which the public burdens occasion, and 

♦ The Repoi-t of the Parliamentary proceedings of April, 1819, furnishes 
the following. 

" Mr. Bennct said (House of Commons) he had no high opinion of the. 
tender sympathies of ministers on these subjects. He had in his recollec- 
tion what passed on tlie subject of convicts in tlie year 1789, when they were 
first sent out; when (the house would scarcely believe it) it -^vas proposed ami 
discussed in the Privy Coviicil, -uhether the convicts at that time should not he sold to 
the Bey of Tripoli as slaves .' Tliis proposition (the proposition of, as we uniler- 
stood, //oni .4HfA-/(/7irf) was considered, though of course rejected; thoiig-li 
it showed how little disposed the government were at that time to attend to 
the situation of the convicts. At the same time, a ship that was sent out 
with them had not any settled destination ; and the sentences of some of the 
convicts had expired before they reached the colony to which they were at 
length consigned." 

■j- See page 304. 

i "From the year 1785 to 1801, of 3833 convicts embarked, 385 died or^ 
noai-d the transports, behig nearly one in ten." O^IIura's History of JV*. S 
ll'ales. 

" The difRculties, which for a long course of years attended the plan for 
sending our convicts to New South Wales, gave rise to the convict cstablisH- 
ments at Woohvick, Sheerness, and Portsmouth : where great munbers of 
criminals were crowded together to await the hour of their deportation, un- 
der circumstances of the most afflicting nature ; many, who have been seri- 
tencedto transportation, having passed the whole period of their punishment 
in a state of wretched and useless imprisonment at home. Such was then 
the condition of these establishments, that they were pronounced in the 
House of Commons, by one of the best and greatest men that ever entered 
its walls, to be a hot bed of vice and wiclcedness." lioscoe, Obaervations o?i 
jPehal Jurisprndeiice, 1819. 



SLAVE TRABl'. 

:\e operation of the poor laws ; to say nothing of the cases so SEC 
common in time of war, of seamen impressed when returning ^--^ 
irom distant voyages, and that even without being allowed 
the comfort of seeing their families. 

Kidnapping is frequent ; but the states have universally 
subjected it to the severest penalties ; some of them to that of 
death. As great an abhorrence for it pervades the whole 
country, as any crime can be supposed to excite among a 
moral people. The flagellation of the slaves for misdemeanors, 
or troni the impulses of anger, or churlishness in the masters, 
is, no doubt, too common ; but it would be every way unjust 
to judge of the conduct of the Americans in this respect, by 
what passes in the West Indies. In the use of the lash 
the discipline of the southern plantations is contradistin- 
guished from that of the West Indian, as much as in the de- 
gree of labour and the supply of food. Public opinion, 
and all the other causes of reformation which I have no- 
ticed, operate equally in this matter. But it is not for an 
Englishman to complain of the use of the lash among fo- 
reigners. The hysterical indignation ofthe British Reviewer^ 
and travellers on this head, appears even ludicrous, when we 
advert to the fact, that no nation employs the scourge more se- 
verely or generally than the British. Education with her is con- 
ducted with the birch; whippingis almosther sum of discipline 
in the army and navy; the seaman is flogged from ship to ship; 
the soldier, tied up to the halberds and exposed in the most 
shameful and ignominious manner,dies under the stripes of the 
drummer, or is withdrawn only when the surgeon who watches 
his ebbing pulse, declares that nature can bear no more. The 
number of apprentices in Great Britain is, probably, little less 
than that of our negroes ; corporal punishment is as familiarly 
inflicted-upan them, and as frequently to a brutal excess : I 
attest the Old Bailey calendar, when I assert, that they 
are oftener maimed and murdered by the hand of the mas- 
ter. So horrid and multiplied were the enormities of this 
kind, which accident or private feeling brought to light, that 
the legislature was compelled to interfere ; but with how little 
effect the records of the Assizes and the tenor of the late 
Parliamentary Reports, will show. In short, there is no form 
of human suffering which an Englishman is so much accus- 
tomed to witness, to hear and to read of, in his own country, 
as flagellation in all its varieties and degrees. I do not wisli 
to pursue this odious topic, on which reprisals might have no 

nd, further than to quote a passage of some significancv from 
Vol. I.— 3 G 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

T I- a late and excellent work of Mr. Roscoe of Liverpool. 

" " It has frequently been observed, with some degree of exul- 
tation, that torture is not permitted in this country. If by 
torture be meant the subjecting a person to the rack, for the 
purpose of compelling him to give evidence, or to confess an 
imputed crime, this country is certainly not chargeable Avith 
so diabolical a practice. But, if the lacerating and scourging 
the person of an individual, as a punishment for his offences, 
be torture^ it is a proceeding not only well known to our laws, 
but of frequent occurrence. There are, in fact, few mutilations 
or sufferings to which the human frame can be subjected, that 
have not, in this countrj', at one time or another, been resort- 
ed to, as a punishment for offenders ; nor does there appear to 
be any obstruction, other than such as arises from the more 
improved and humanized spirit of the times, to similar pun- 
ishments being again inflicted ; but independent of these bar- 
barities, the use of the whip is general throughout the prisons 
of the kingdom, where prisoners, for small offences, are 
rvhipljed and discharged.''''^ 

Those advertisements for the recovery of runaways, which 
are copied into the English Reviews, and books of Travels, 
with exclamations of such horror and reproof, as though Eng- 
lish newspapers contained nothing to chafe the feelings of 
humanity, and rouse the spirit of freedom, are incident to the 
existence itself of negro slavery ; and I think I have shown 
that this is an evil which could neither be avoided nor remov- 
ed by America. Negroes cannot be held as property, without 
being subject to alienation. A mortmain would be impracti- 
cable, and if it could be established, mischievous to all par- 
ties. The proclamation of the intention to sell, while it gives 
effect to the necessary and useful right of alienation, affords 
the subject of it a better chance of being transferred into good 
hands. At all events, it is an inevitable incident of an inevi- 
table institution. Slaves who abscond from the master must 
be reclaimed, or there would be an end to all slavery in the 
most mischievous of all forms of abolition. Without the aid 
of the public, the master would be unable to recover the fugi- 
tive. And it is to be presumed that the latter is, quite as often, 
ii delinquent seeking independence for the sake of licentious- 
ness, or from a refractory disposition, as a victim escaping the 
exactions of avarice, or the lash of tyranny. Unfortunately, 
the character of the negro race with us, and indeed the charac- 
ter which is produced in all cases of bondage, might warrant 



Observations on Vo:;al Jurisprudence, 1819. 



SLAVE TliADE. 

a presumption more unfavom-able to the slave. His flight is,SKC' 
in a general point of view, a violation of the order of society, ^^-^^ 
which it is the interest, and, abstractedly, the duty, of ever\ 
citizen to repress and correct. 

The Quarterly Review of May, 1819, after transcribing 
irom Fearon's Travels a couple of plain advertisements of 
negroes yir sale or h'lre^ which that missionary had extracted 
from a New York paper, proceeds thus — " What, subjoins 
]Mr. Fearon with an amiable warmth, should xve say, if in 
England we saw such advertisements in the Times news- 
paper ? Should rve not conclude that freedom existed onlv in 
words? Such would, indeed, be a legitimate conclusion." — 
Alas, then, for the freedom of England herself, as late as 
1772, notwithstanding the boasts of the Britons of that day! 
Clarkson and Granville Sharp have kept a record which, upon 
the principles of Mr. Fearon and the Quarterly Review, in- 
^alidates all their pretensions. Clarkson, having mentioned 
the opinion given in 1729, by the great law officers of the 
crov/n — that a slave coming from the West Indies into Great 
Britain did not become free, and that the master might legal- 
ly compel him to return again to the plantations, — makes the 
following statement: 

" The cruel and illegal opinion was delivered in the year , 
1729. The planters, merchants, and others, gave it of course 
all the publicity in their power. And the consequences were 
as might easily have been apprehended. In a little time slaves 
absconding were advertised in the London papers as runa- 
ways, and rewards offered for the apprehension of them, in 
the same brutal manner as we find them advertised in the 
land of slaverv. They were advertised also, in the same pa- 
pers, to be sold by auction, sometimes by themselves, and at 
others with horses, chaises, and harness. They were seized 
also by their masters, or by persons employed by them, in the 
very streets, and dragged from thence to the ships ; and so 
unprotected now were these poor slaves, that persons in no 
v/ise concerned with them began to institute a trade in their 
persons, making agreements with captains of ships going to 
the West Indies to put them on board at a certain price." 

Granville Sharp, unmindful, like the British Reviewers, 
that the domestic slavery which Britain had planted in ovir * 
soil, and so assiduously cultivated, could not be excinded, 
nor divested of its essential properties, also suffered him- 
self to be fired by some New York advertisements. When 
he has recited them, in his " Representation of the Injus- 



XilGRO SLAVKUY AND 

tice of Slavery,"* he proceeds, however, m a different 
way — 

" But hold! perhaps the Americans may be able, with too 
much justice, to retort this severe reflection, and may refer 
us to newspapers published even in the free city of London, 
which contain advertiseiTients, not less dishonourable than 
their own. See the following advertisement in the Public 
Ledger of 31st December, 1761. 

" FOR SALE, 

" A healthy Negro Girl, aged about 15 years; speaks 
good English, works at her needle, washes well, does house- 
hold work, and has had the small pox. By I. W. &:c." 

Another advertisement, not long ago, offered a reward for 
stopping a female slave who had left her mistress in Hatton 
Garden. And in the Gazetteer of 18th April, 1769, ap- 
peared a very extraordinary advertisement, with the follow- 
ing title. 

" HORSES, TIM WHISKEY, AND BLACK BOY. 

" To be sold, at the Bull and Gate Inn, Holborn, a very 
good Tim Whiskey, little the worse for wear, &c." After- 
wards, " A chesnut Gelding." — Then, " A very good grev 
Mare." — And last of all, (as if of the least consequence) "A 
well made good tempered Black Boy ; he has lately had the 
small pox, and will be sold to any gentleman. Enquire as 
above." 

Another advertisement in the same paper, contains a very 

particular description of a negro man, called Jeremiah , 

and concludes as follows : — " Whoever delivers him to captain 
M — u — y, on board the Elizabeth, at Prince's stairs, Rother- 
hithe, on or before the 3 1st instant, shall receive thirty guineas 
reward, or ten guineas for such intelligence as shall enable 
the captain or his master, effectually to secure him." 

" A Creole Black Boy is also offered to sale in the Daily 
Advertiser of the same date." 

" Besides these instances, the Americans may perhaps 
taunt us with the shameful treatment of a poor negro servant, 
who not long ago was put up to sale by public auction, toge- 
ther with the effects of his bankrupt master. — Also, that the 



* London, 1769. 



SLAVE TRADE. 

prisons of this free city have been frequently prostituted of SEC 
late by the tyrannical and dangerous practice of confining ^•-^~' 
negroes, under the pretence of slavery, though there has been 
no warrant whatsoever for their commitment." 

It may be said that these practices were arrested in Eng- 
land. They were indeed, and so have they been wherever 
tliis could be done, in the United States. But they were 
more wanton and malignant in that countrv, since they did 
not spring out of a general and long established system of 
slavery; and they show how the people of England would 
have acted, if the old law had not proved to be, on laborious 
investigation, peremptory upon the Subject. The British 
merchant, however, continued to fit out his ship at Liver- 
pool, or London, for the coast of Africa ; the British factory 
supplied him with troops of kidnapped negroes; his captain 
transported them, with every refinetnent of crueltv, to the 
British West Indies, and there advertised and sold them, un- 
der the sanction of the British government, in the name of 
his owner, a great stickler, perhaps, for liberty and universal 
emancipation ; who railed each day against American incon- 
sistency and barbarity in holding and advertising slaves, and 
repeated complacently the well known verses of Cowper, 
'■'■ slaves cannot breathe in England," &c. 

30. We do not deny, in America, that great abuses and evils 
accompany our negro slavery. The plurality of the leading 
men of the southern states, are so well aware of its pestilent 
genius, that they would be glad to see it abolished, if this.werc 
feasible with benefit to the slaves, and without inflicting on 
the country, injury of such magiiitude as no communitv has 
ever voluntarilv incurred. While a really practicable plan of 
abolition remains undiscovered, or undetermined ; and while 
the general conduct of the Americans is such only as neces- 
sarily results from their situation, they are not to be arraigned 
for this institution. If, — as I have no doubt is the case, — it 
produces here much less misery and vice, than it produces 
in the other countries which are cursed with it, it fur- 
nishes occasion rather for praise than blame. The native 
Americans claim the distinction of abusingless the dangerous 
power with which it invests the slave-holder ; of consulting- 
more the comfort and general welfare of its victims ; than the 
foreigners, Britons not excepted, who so readily participate in 
^hat power on associating themselves to this nation. We are 



KEG 110 SLAVEilY AND 

r I. told by an English writer, Ramsay,* who is supported in the 
"^^ assertion by Edwards, tliat, with respect to the West India 
slavery, " adventurers from Europe are universally more 
cruel and morose towards the slaves than the Creoles or na- 
tive West Indians." The analogy is perfect in our case, and 
of notoriety. It is a matter of old experience in Virginia 
and the Carolinas ; and the American planter appears to like 
advantage atpresent in Louisiana, inthe contrast, on this head, 
with the French and Spanish, Avho have pursued, but who are 
gradually abandoning under the salutar}' influence of our 
political and social spirit, an hereditar}' svstem of rigour. 

In admitting the deformity and evil of our negro slavery, 
we are far from acknowledging, that any nation of Europe is 
entitled, upon a general comparison between our situation as 
it is thus unluckily modified, and her own, with all appen- 
dages and ingredients, to assign to herself the pre-eminence 
in felicity, virtue, or wisdom. On the contrary, we know of 
none with which we Vv'ould make .^ general exchange of" in- 
stitutions," and are assured that there is none, whose mode of 
being on the Avhole, is not much more unfavourable than ours, 
to the attainment of the great ends of society. Who can 
say that the negro slavery of these states, combined even with 
every other spring of ill existing among us, occasions, propor- 
tionably, as much of suffering, immoralitv, and vileness, as the 
imequal distribution of wealth and the distinctions of rank, 
the manufacturing system, the penal code, the taxes, the 
tythes, the poor lates, the impressment in England ? Are there 
not as many of her inhabitants, as the xvliolt number of our 
blacks^ as effectually " disfranchised ;" as entirely uninstruct- 
ed ; in the last stage of penury and distress ; whose physical 
conditipn universally, is hardly better than that of the most 
lov.dv plantation slave, and who are heart-struck and broken- 
spirited, if not hardened and enraged? 

Let us examine for a moment how the case stands with the 
people of England, as to one of the worst of the effects, with 
which our, and all other domestic slavery, is properly re- 
proached, — the abasement of the human character. Lord 
Sheffield is a witness who will never be suspected of a dispo- 
sition to. disparage his country. In 1818, he published a 
pamphlet, entitled Observations on the Poor Laws ; which 
contains the following, among other striking representations : 

" There is much truth in the remark that a small additional 
increase of the assessments would, in many instances, render 

• F.ssay on the treatment and conversion of slaves, &c. 



SLAVE TRADK. 

tbe land productive of no rent at all. The very aggravated SEC 
situation of our little farmers is deplorable ; it is ruinous." ^-^ 

" In many parishes, three-fourths, sometimes four-fifths 
of the parish, actually receive relief: the greatest part of the 
population have become beggars, and often insolently insist 
upon relief, depending rather upon their clamorous demands 
than on their industry, foresight, or economy." 

" The prevailing abuses have brought the country to such 
a pass, and have so demoralized and vitiated a great propor- 
tion of the people^ that, notwithstanding the ruinous expense 
incurred by the poor rates, the misery of the lower ranks is 
so for from being alleviated, that it is virtually created and 
extended by it." 

In the House of Commons, March 3d, 1818, Mr. Curwen 
said, that " the inadequacy of wages and the practice of sup- 
plying the deficiencv of them from the parish funds, had de- 
troijcd the apirit of independence among the poor?'' In the 
month of March of the year preceding, Lord Castlereagh re- 
marked to the house, that " it must be aware that a great 
proportion of the wages of the countrv was paid out of the 
poor rates." On the 19th May, 1819,' Lord J, Russel said, 
in the same place, " he must refer to tlie conduct of the mi- 
nistrv on the important subject of the poor laws, the discus- 
sion of which subject not one of his majesty's ministers had 
attended. A lamented friend of his, whose loss v\-as felt 
every day more and more^ — he meant Mr. Horner — had ob- 
served that by the present poor laws, the people were return- 
ing fast to a state of villeinage. The observation was true ; 
they were returning to a state of villeinage., and to a state of 
villeinage that was incalculably more dangerous that that 
%.hich existed six centuries ago in an age of darkness and 
superstition. S;>rry v/as he to say that the once manly 
peasantry of this country, were now becoming lazy and riot- 
ous, and disrespectful to their superiors, and that they were 
begiiming to look up to the laws with no other view than 
that of obtaining by them a temporary subsistence." 

We have the curious confession of Lord Sidmouth, made 
in the House of Peers, on the 3d June, 1818, that "it was 
notorious the dread of transportation had almost subsided, 
and perhaps had been succeeded by the. desire to emigrate to 
Nexv South Wales.'''' This desire, which indicates so clearly 
the state of things at hoine, would not appear, however, to 
have been always indulged. Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, in her 
evidence befoi'e the committee of the House of Commons on 
the state of the prisons, mentioned that " several persons, 



NBGRO SLAVERY AXD SLAVE TRAHE. 

L husbands in anxiety to follow their wives, and vice versa, were 
■^"^ induced to commit crimes. She instanced one woman who 
lately suffered death, viz. Charlotte Newman, actuated by a 
desire to follow her husband to Botanv Bay, who had com- 
mitted the same offence ; but it was thought proper to make 
an example of her, and shetvas executed i''"' 

I could produce lamentations without end, uttered in Par- 
liament and in the British pamphlets on domestic affairs, re- 
specting this prostration of character among the body of the 
English people. It is one view of the state of society in Great 
Britain, which excites grief and commisseration ; but there 
are numberless others which fill the mind with horror, and 
bring unequalled disgrace upon human nature. The extent 
and variety of the disorder, corruption, oppression, and bar- 
barity ; in short, of every species of guilt, miser}", and degra- 
dation, which we find unveiled in the late Parliamentary Re- 
ports concei-ningthe poor laws ; the state of the prisons ; the 
lunatic asylums, and work-houses ; the charitable trusts ; the 
mendicity and vagrancy, particularly of London ; the igno- 
rance of the lower orders ; the administration of the penal 
code, — could not be believed, if they were not so authenti- 
cated ; and can as yet scarcely be conceived to exist in a 
community professing to be well governed, and st)ding itself 
the " best and most enlightened" in the world.* America 
will be content to admit all that British travellers have writ- 
ten of her negro slavery ; to " hold each strange tale de- 
voutly true ;" and then to stand the comparison with Great 
Britain, provided tlie disclosures of those Reports, the prac- 
tice of impressment, the system of discipline in the army and 
navy, the proceedings during the suspension of the habeas 
corpus act, the excise, and the hulks, be kept in view by the 
umpire. 

♦See Note' Z. 



NOTES. 



^NOTE A, p. 35.) 

The character of the American Indians is too apt to be nnderrated PART l. 
by the historians, and the proper degree of credit to be, therefore, v^<-v~^^ 
withheld from the European settlers in North America, as regards the 
issue of the struggle. 1 select from writers, who may be considered as 
of the highest authority, some general views of Indian hostilities. 

"The Indians," says Ramsay, in his History of South Carolina, " in 
their miHtary capacity, were not so inferior to the whites as some may 
imagine. The superiority of muskets over bows and arrows, managed 
by Indians, in a woody country, is not great. The savage, quick-sighted 
and accustomed to perpetual watchfulness, springs from his hiding- 
place, behind a bush, and surprises his enemy with the pointed arrow 
before he is aware of danger. He ranges tiirough the trackless forest 
like the beasts of prey, and safely sleeps under the same canopy with 
the wolf and bear. His vengeance is concealed, till he sends the tidings 
in the fatal blow." 

"The Indians go to war," says Franklin, in his Canada Pamphlet, 
"as they call it, in small parties, from fifty men down to five. Their 
hunting life has made them acquainted with the whole country, and 
scarce any part of it is impracticable to such a party. They can travel 
through the woods even by night, and know how to conceal their tracks. 
They pass easily between your forts undiscovered ; and privately ap- 
proach the settlements of your frontier inhabitants. They need no 
convoys of provisions to follow them ; for whether they are shifting 
from place to place in the woods, or lying in wait for an opportunity to 
strike a blow, every thicket and stream furnishes so small a number 
with sufficient subsistence. When they have surprised separately, and 
murdered and scalped a dozen families, they are gone with inconceiv- 
able expedition through unknown ways : and it is very rare that pur- 
suers have any chance of coming up with them." 

PoimaWs Administration of the Colonies. 

"Our American frontiers," says governor Pownall, in his Adminis- 
tration of the Colonies, " from the nature of advancing settlements, 
dispersed along the branches of the upper parts of our rivers, and 
scattered in the disunited vallies, amidst the mountains, must be always 
unguarded, and defenceless against the incursions of Indians. And 
were we able, under an Indian war, to advance our settlenitnts yet far- 
ther, they 'vould be advanced up to the very dens of those savages. A 
settler, wholly intent on labouring on ths soil, cannot stand to his arms. 

Vol.. I.— 3 H 



N0TE3. 

nor defend lilmself against, nor seek his enemy. Environed with woods 
and swamps, he knows nothing of the country beyond his farm. The 
Indian knows every spot for ambush or defence, 'flic farmer, driven 
from his little cultured lot into the woods, is lost: the Indian in the 
woods is every where at home ; every bush, every tliicket, is a camp to 
tile Indian, from whence at the very moment wlien lie is sure of his blow, 
he can rush upon his prey. Tl>e farmer's cow or his horse cannot go 
into the woods, where alone they must subsist : his wife and children, 
if they shut themselves up in their poor wretclied log-house, will be 
burned in it : and the husbandmen in the field will be shot down while 
his hands hold the plough. An European settler can make but mo- 
mentary efforts of war, in hopes to gain some point, that he may by it 
obtain a series of security, under whicli to work his lands in peace. 
Tiie Indian's whole life is a warfare, and his operations never discon- 
tinued. In short, our frontier settlements must ever lie at the mercy of 
the savages : and a settler is the natural prey to an Indian, whose sole 
occupation is war and hunting. To the countries, circumstanced as our 
colonies are, an Indian is the most dreadful of enemies. For, in a war 
with Indians, no force wliatever can defend our frontiers from being a 
constant wretched scene of conflagrations, and of the most shocking 
murders. Whereas, on the contrary, our temporary expeditions against 
these Indians, even if successful, can do these wanderers little harm. 
Every article of their property is portable," &c. 

" The Indians," says Loskiel, in his History of the Indian Missions, 
" need not much provocation to begin a war with the white people ; » 
trifling occurrence may easily furnish a pretence. They frequently 
first determine upon war, and then wait a convenient opportunity, to 
find reasons for it : nor are they much at a loss to find them. 

"It has occasioned much surprise, that notwithstanding the prevail- 
ing fear of the Six Nations, lest the Europeans should become too 
powerful, they have sold them one tract of land after the other. Some 
thought it was done merely for the sake of the presents offered by the 
purchasers. But experience has shown, that this settling of land proved 
the best pretence for a war. For when the white people had settled 
upon the purchased territory, they drove them away again. They have 
frequently continued their hostilities against the white people, even 
dtu'ing the settling of the peace, or renewed them soon after. In such 
a critical juncture, the Europeans cannot sufficiently guard against the 
Indians, especially against the Iroquois. They will treat a white person, 
who is ignorant of their evil designs, with all ai>i)arent civility, and 
give him victuals and drink, but before he is aware, cleave his skull with 
an hatchet." 



(NOTE B. p, 42.) 

Thk first constitution of South Carolina was framed by Locke. M. 
Verplank, in the beautiful Anniversary Discourse, from which I have 
made a long extract in the text, celebrates him ;\mong "the illustrious 
dead, the rich fruits of whose labours we are now enjoying ;" as one of 
the original legislators of the country, who gave to our political charac- 
ter its first impulse and direction." It appears to me, that the great 
philosopher is not entitled to these distinctions, as far, at least, as his 
fuiidamentul constitutions for Carolina are concerned. M. Verplank, in 
claiming for them "7n<i«;/ excellent provisions," acknowledges that they 
were "in all respects, unnecessarily complicated and artificial." I see 
but two provisions in them worthy of particidar approbation — to wit, 



NOTES. 4^1 

lire biennial parliamfent, and the perfect freedom in religion. On the PAUT I. 
whole, it is wonderful how Locke, so practical and sober in his specu- >w^^^-^ter> 
lations generally, could have fallen upon a scheme cf government so 
fanciful, and indeetl so preposterous, wiien viewed in rcfei'ence to the 
character and situation of the colonists fur whom it was intciuied. "No- 
thing," says Chalmers, "can show more clearly the fuilibihty of the 
human understanding' than the singular fite of these constitutions. Dis- 
covered instantly to be wholly inapplicalde to the circumstances of au 
inconsiderable colony, and in a variety of cases, to be altogether im- 
practicable, tiiey were immediately changed. The identity of them 
was debated by tliose to whom they were offered as a rule of conduct, 
because they had not been consulted in the formation of them. They 
gave rise to the greatest disscntions, which long distracted llie province, 
and engendered civil discord. And, after a little period of years, the 
whole, found inconvenient and even dangerous, were laid aside, and a 
much simpler form established."* 

" Locke," adds this author, " was, iir the year 1670, created a land- 
grave, as a reward for his services ; and, like the other Carofmian no- 
bles created under this constitution, would have been consigned to 
oblivion, but for tiiose writings that have enlightened the world, while 
they have immortalized himself." Tiiose admirable writings had, un- 
doubtedly, a sensible influence over the minds of the American legisla- 
tors of a subsequent period. Tiieir impress is distinguishable in our 
present federal constitution particularly. His fundamental principles 
were, however, embodied in political statutes, and put into steady ac- 
tion, in the midst of the North American wilderness, even before the 
era of his birth. If we compare his constitutions fur Carolina witli 
those which the New England settlers iiamed for themselves, we will 
not have much to complain of "tlie fallibility of the human understand- 
ing," as to mock at the pride of philosophy, and to question the compe- 
tency of the highest talents in specidation, to the business of devising 
the "true rule of action for communities of men. The French phi- 
losophers succeeded for their country, no better than Locke for 
Carolina: Jeremy Bcntham's " Codification" is a master-piece of ab- 
surdity, &c. 



(NOTE C. p. 48.) 

TuE body of Roman Catholic gentlemen, who settled Maryland in 
1633, appear to me to be clearly entitled to the merit of priority in the 
establishment of religious freedom for all Chrislian sects. Lord Balti- 
more, as we have seen in the text, by his original plan of polity, estab- 
lished Christianity agreeably to the old common law, with the express 
denial of pre-eminence to any sect. His associates recognized this 
principle, and acted upon it from the outset. The first assemblies of 
the freemen of the province, held in 1634-5-7-8-9, all admitted it as 
fundamental. I'hat of 1649, promulged a statute concerning religious 
equality and freedom, which is not only prior in date, as a charter for 
all Christian sects, to any other legislative act of the kind, of which this 
country can boast, but provides more minutely and anxiously than any 
other extant, for the protection of the rights of conscience, and the 
preservation of religious harmony. I know of no law on the subject 

* Annals, p. 528. 



3 N0TK8. 

JIT I. bespeaking so tolerant a spirit as to the divisions of Cln-istianily ; s© 
■v^Vi^ prudent and sound a judgment, and so generous a solicitude. It is to 
be noted, that among the early settlers, were several priests. The num- 
ber of these had increased at the date of the act, and their concur- 
rence in its regulations, is ascertained from unquestionable evidence. 
The toleration of the Church of England might have been unavoidable 
for the founders of Maryland, and at all events, tended obviously to 
keep them well with the English government. But no motive of this 
nature existed with respect to the sectaries, whose familiar appella- 
tions tliey enumerated, as far as it was practicable, in the law, in order 
to their greater security even from insult. The favour of the English 
government was, on the contrary, to be gained by the persecution of 
the Quakers and Puritans. 

Roger Williams began his plantation in Providence in 1635. Rhode 
Island was settled 1638. In these settlements, a system of universal 
toleration would seem to have been pursued from the beginning. 
.^-^ But there is no specific law on the subject of religious freedom in the 
first code of Rhode Island, of 1647, although the concluding paragraph 
of that code implies universal toleration. It is said in the Political An- 
nals of Chalmers,* that among the ordinances of the Rhode Island S.s- 
sembly of 1663, there is one which enacts, that " all men professing 
Christianity, and of competent estates and civil conversation, Roman 
Catholics only excepted, shall be admitted freemen, or may choose or be 
chosen colonial officers." Holmes has repeated this statement in his 
very useful Annals ; and its correctness does not appear to have been 
questioned by any of our historians. This disfranchisement of Roman 
Catholics was so little in unison, however, with the doctrines previously 
asserted and acted upon by Rhode Island and her illustrious founder, 
Roger Williams, that it was natural to doubt of the existence of the al- 
leged exception. The attention of the public having been drawn to 
the subject, last winter, by Mr. Verplank's Discourse, James Burril, jun. 
Esq., the distinguished senator from Rhode Island, in the federal con- 

i' grass, zealous for the honour and credit of Roger Williams, as the 
-^ earliest apostle of unlimited toleration, solicited Mr. Samuel Eddy, the 
secretary of state of Rhode Island, to make research into her records, 
with a view to the solution of the difficuUy. Mr. Eddy had occupied,the 
station of secretary from October, 1/97, until May, 1819, and acquired a 
tliorough acquaintance with the archives and antiquities of Rhode 
Island. He is besides, a gentleman of discriminating mind and scrupu- 
lous veracity, who must inspire the fullest confidence in every point of 
view. 
,.,-j'^" Mr. Burril has had the goodness to communicate to me the answer of 
Mr. Eddy, containing the results of a diligent investigation. I am induced 
to make it part of this note, notwithstanding its length, being assured 
that it will be considered as interesting and valuable, by all who are 
curious or concerned about American history. It affords a fine lesson 
of state liberality, and establishes the singular facts — that the restriction 
in the law, to those only who profess Christianity, and the exception of 
Roman Catholics, were introduced after the year 1638, by some com- 
mittee who prepared a new digest of the laws ; that if the restriction, 
with the exception, was ever approved of by the Rhode Island Assem- 
bly, this approbation must have been given after 1688 ; and that the ob- 
ject of its introduction and continuation was solely to win favour in 
England in the reigns of William and Anne. The bigotry of the mother 
country is set in a striking light, by the necessity of such a feint for the 
acquisition of her good will. 

* C. xi'. 



]SOT£S. 



Statement of Mr. Eddij. PART 

The first settlers in Providence, (1636) and in the island of Tlhodc 
Island, (1638) were governed by voluntary associations until 1647. Re- 
ligious liberty was fully enjoyed in these associations. In March 1643-4, 
a charter was obtained by Roger Williams from " the Governor in 
Chief, Lord Admiral, and Commissioners for foreign plantations," au- 
thorising the inhabitants to adopt "such a form of civil government as 
by voluntary consent of all or the greater part of tiiem, they should 
iind most suitable to their estate and condition," " and to make and or- 
dain such civil laws," &c. " as they or the greater part of them should 
by free consent agree unto," " to be conformable to the laws of V.n^- 
land so far as the'nature and constitution of the place would admit." 

Pursuant to this charter, in May 1647, a form of government and p. 
body of laws were agreed to. The laws are thus introduced : 

" And now to the end that we may give each to the other (notwith- 
standing our different consciences, touching the truth as it is in Jesus, 
whereof upon the point we all make mention,) as good and hopeful as- 
surance as we are able, touching each man's peaceable and quiet en- 
joyment of his lawful right and liberty. We do agree unto, and by 
the authority abovesaid, enact, estabhsh, and confirm these orders fol- 
lowing." 

Among others, " That no person in this colony shall be taken or im- 
prisoned, or be disseised of his lands or liberties, or be exiled or any 
otherwise molested or destroyed, but by the lawful judgment of his 
peers, or by some known law, and according to the letter of it, ratified 
and confirmed by the major part of the General Assembly, lawfully met, 
and orderly managed." 

" For as much as the consciences of sundry men truly conscionable, 
may scruple the giving or taking of an oath, and it vi'ould be no ways 
suitable to the nature and constitution of our place, (who pi'ofess 
ourselves to be men of different consciences, and not one willing to 
force another,) to debar such as cannot so do, either from bearing office 
among us, or from giving in testimony in a case dejiending. Be it 
enacted," &c. " that a solemn profession be accounted of as full force 
as an oath," &c. This body of laws is concluded by these memorable 
words, " These are the laws that concern all men, and these are the 
penalties for the transgressions thereof, which, by common consent, are 
ratified and established throughout the whole colony. And otherwise 
than thus, what is herein forbidden, all men may walk as their con- 
sciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God. And let 
the lambs of the Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in 
the name of Jehovah their God, for ever and ever." 

These are all the laws relating to this subject under the charter of 
1643-4. The second charter bears date July 8, 1663, was brought over 
(by Capt. George Baxter,) and presented to the Court of Commission- 
ers, November 24, 1663, and the next day to " a very great meeting 
and assembly of the freemen of the colony." The day following, the 
Court of Commissioners resigned their authority, and declared them- 
selves dissolved. -— 
The preamble to this charter recites, "that whereas in their hum- 
ble address, they have freely declared, that it is mucli in their hearts (if 
they may be permitted) to hold forth a lively experiment, that a most 
flourishing civil state may stand, and best be maintained, and that among 
our English subjects, with a full liberiy in religious concernments," and 
then declares, " That no person within the .said colony at any time 
hereafter shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in 
question, for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, who do 



KOTES. 

not actually disturb the civil peace of oui* said colony, but that all and 
every person and persons may from time to time, and at all times here- 
after freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and 
consciences in matters of religious concernments, they behaving them- 
selves peaceably and quietly, and not using this liberty to licentiousness, 
and profaneness, nor to the civil injury nor outward disturbance of 
others." 

The first meeting of the General Assembly under this charter, was 
March 1, 1663-4, when the government was organized. They repealed 
certain laws, which were " contradictory to the form of the present 
government," and " ordered and enacted that all olher laws be of 
force, until some other coiu'se be taken by a General Assembly for 
better provision therein." 

The proceedings of this session are all entire, and there is not a word 
071 record, of the act referred to by Chalmers, Political Annals, c. x'l. 
and contained in the revision of 1745, purporting to have been passed 
the session of 1663-4. 

Nor is there any thing on record, at either of the sessions this year, 
which has any relation to the subject, unless the following may be so 
considered. At May session, the inhabitants of Block Island, being 
incorporated into a town, the recorder (secretary) was desired to fur- 
nish them with " a transcript of the body of laws," (enacted under 
the first charter,) and " at present," to communicate to them the fol- 
lowing words of the charter, to wit, " That no person within the said 
colony at any time hereafter, shall be anywise molested, punished, dis- 
quieted, or called in question for any difference of opinion in matters of 
jeligion, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of the said colony." 
At the same time, John Sands and Joseph Kent, freemen of Block 
Island, presented a petition in behalf of a number of the inhabitants, of 
that island, praying that the latter ntight be admitted freemen of the 
colon}-, " and being demanded, if they did know, that all the aforesaid 
persons were men of peaceable and good behaviour, and likely to prove 
worthy and helpful members of the colony, they answered yea." 
Whereupon they were admitted. No where have I discovered any en- 
quiry I'especting religion, on the admission of freemen. 

At the session in May, 1665, three of the king's commissioners, Carr, 
Cartwright, and Maverick, presented to the General Assembly five 
propositions or proposals, as they are called in the records ; the first and 
second of which are in these words, — 1st. " That all householders, inha- 
biting this colony, take the oath of allegiance, and that the administra- 
tion of justice be in his majesty's name." 2d. •' That all men of com- 
petent estates, and civil conversation, wlio acknowledge, and are obedi- 
ent to the civil magistrate, though of difierent judgments, may be ad- 
mitted freemen, and have liberty to choose and to be chosen officers 
l)oth civil and military." 

In answer to the first, after saying much about liberty of conscience 
in relation to oaths, &c. (See Hist. Collections Massachusetts, vol. 7. 
2d series, p. 95.) they enacted, that an "engagement of allegiance" 
should be given (the form of which is prescribed) " by all men capable, 
within tlieir jurisdiction." 

In answer to the second, they enacted, " That so many of them that 
take the aforesaid engagements, and are of competent estates, eivil 
conversation, and obedient to the civil magistrate, sliall be admitted 
freemen of this colony, upon their express desire therein declared to 
the General Assembly, either by themselves, with sufficient testimony 
of their fitness and qualifications, as shall by the Assembly be deemed 
satisfactory, or if by the chief officers of the town or towns where they 
live, they be proposed and declared as abovesaid, and that none shall 
have admission to vote for public officers or deputies, or enjoy any pri- 



NOTES. ' 43 

viliege of freemen, till admitted by the Assembly as aforesaid, and their PAUT 1 
names recorded in the general records of the colony." 

To the third proposal (See Hist. Coll. Mass. p. 99.) they say, "This 
Assembly do witli all gUidness of heart and humbleness of mind, ac- 
knowledge the great goodness of God, and favour of his Majesty in that 
respect, declaring, that as it hatii been a jjrinciple held forth and main- 
tained in this colony ,/?'«H» the very beginning tliereoJ\ so it is much in their 
hearts to procure the same liberty to all persons within this colony for- 
ever, as to the worship of God therein, taking care for the preservation 
of civil government, to the doing of justice, and preserving each other's 
privileges from wrong and violence of others." 

Among other reasons assigned in a law allowing compensation to the 
members of Assembly, to enable them the better to discharge their 
duties, passed September, 1666, is this, " So as in some good measure 
to answer one main ground of his Majesty's grant, which was to hold 
forth a lively experiment, that a most flourishing civil state may stand 
and best be maintained, and that among his English subjects, with a 
full liberty in religious eoncernmenls." 

A militia law, passed May, 1&77, is concluded with the woi'ds, "Pro- 
vided always, that this Assembly do hereby declare, that it is their full 
and unanimous resolution, to maintain a full liberty in religious con- 
cernments, relating to the worship of God, and that no person inhabit- 
ing within this jurisdiction shall be in any wise molested, punished, dis- 
quieted or called in question for any difference in opinion in matters 
of religion, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of this colony.'', 

I have formerly examined the records of the state, from its first set- 
tlement, with a view to liistorical information, and lately, from 1665 to 
1719, with a particular view to this law, excluding Roman Catholics 
from the privileges of freemen, and can find nothing that has any re- 
ference to it, nor any thing that gives any preference or privileges to 
men of one set of religious opinions over those of another, until the re- 
vision of 1745. 

It remains now to account for the law quoted by Chalmers, as con- 
tained in this revision of 1745. To do this, it may be proper to state, 
that the general practice was, and which continued under different re- 
gulations till 1798, (the date of the last revision,) either for the secre- 
tary or others united with him, to draw up in form the laws and pro- 
ceedings at the close of each session, and for the secretary to record 
the same, and until 1747, to send copies in manuscript under the seal 
of the colony, to the several towns. The first order for printing the 
proceedings of the General Assembly, was in October, 1747. This first 
edition of the La-ivs was printed in 1719.* This was attended witii so 
many errors, that a committee was appointed to correct them, in a sup- 
plement that was to be printed and annexed to the edition. The .second 
was printed in 1730, by whom, or at what place, I have not learnt. 
Neither of these editions is in the secretary's office, nor have I been 
able to find them. The third was printed in Newport, in 1745, and 
from which I imagine Chalmers quoted. 

Th? laws have beeu uniformly revised by committees. Their prac- 
tice has been to embody in one all the different laws on the same sub- 
ject previously passed, with such additions and amendments as they 
thought proper, confirmed, however, before publication by the General 
Assembly. The two last revisions (1767 and 1798,) give no date to 
the several laws, other than by figures in the margin, generally oppo- 
site the title or first section of the law, referring to the years when the 
different laws embodied in one are supposed to have been passed. 
These references are inaccurate and deficient. 

* By Nicholas Boone in Boston. 



In the revision of 1745,* the ivhole of every law purports to havfc 
been passed at a particular session, though composed of a number o( 
acts passed in different and subsequent years, and which, in many in- 
stances are referred to in tiie margin. None of them are dated before 
March, 1663-4, the time of the first meeting under the second charter, 
and of tiiose which bear this date not one section of any one oftliem -tuas pass- 
ed at this sessio7t. The following act, bearing this date, is traced from 
its origin as a specimen of the inaccuracy of the dates m this revision of 
1745. " Be it enacted," &c. " Tiiat there be one seal made for the 
public use of the colony, and that the form of an anrhor be engraven 
thereon, and tiie motto thereof shall be the word Hope." In the laws 
of 1647, '* It is ordered that the seal of the Province shall be an anchor." 
There is nothing more on this subject till March, 1663-4, " when or- 
dered that for the present, the old seal that liath been the seal of the 
colony, shall be the present seal," until a new one be procured. May, 
1664, "ordered, that the seal with the motto Rhode Island and Provi- 
dence Plantations, with the word Hope, over the head of the anchor, 
is the present seal of the colony." This continued to be the seal till 
1686, when on the surrender of the charter, it was broken by Sir Ed- 
mund Andros, and in February 1689, the charter having been resumed, 
it was " ordered that the seal brought in by Mr. Arnold Collins, being 
the anchor, with the motto Hope, is appointed to be the seal of the 
colony, he having been employed by this Assembly to make it." This 
is now in the secretary's office, and has ever since been the seal of the 
colony and state, is the only one of this description the colony ever had, 
and is tiie same pointed out in the before mentioned act (revision of 
1745,) purporting to have been passed in 1663-4. 

The intention in this revision appears to have been either to date the 
laws at or after the time when tlie operations of government commen- 
ced under the second charter, as having derived all their validity from 
that, or to let the whole of each law compiled as before mentioned, 
bear date when the first act on the subject was supposed to have exist- 
ed under the second charter. For although the " body of laws," as 
enacted under the first charter was continued under the second, yet in 
noinstance do our printed laws imply or express an existence before 
1663-41 Whatever the intention was, great inaccuracy exists as to their 
true date. Thus the law particulary ••eferred to by Chalmers, the 
greater part of which is from Magna Charta, was, in substance, passed in 
1647, as will appear by an extract on the former part of this communi- 
cation. The latter part of the law, and which has occasioned this in- 
quiry, is in these words, " And that all men professitig Christianity, and 
of competent estates, and of civil conversation, who acknowledge, and 
are obedient to the civil magistrate, though of different judgments in 
religious affairs, Roman Catholics only excepted, shall be admitted free- 
men, and shall have liberty to choose and be chosen officers in the 
colony, both military and civil." Now that this law was not passed in 
1663-4 is most certain, for not only does it make no part of the record 
of either session this year, but omitting tiie words professing Christianity. 
and Soman Catholics only excepted, they are the very words of the se- 
cond proposition of Carr, Canwright, and Maverick, made to the Gene- 
ral Assembly in May, 1665, and which at the same time were enacted 
into a law. 

In addition to this, these commissioners, in a narrative of their pro- 

* There have been five, 1719, 1730, 1745, 1767, and 1798. 

j- Policy migiit have suggested the imprudence of noticing an au- 
thority derived from an act of the Long I'arliarnent, under which the 
first chvirter was g^ranted. 



MfB. 433 

ceedings under their commissions, (Hutchinson's Col. 412) expressly PART I. 
Slate that this colony " Admit all in bt; freemen thvii de&ire it, they allow \^'\'^Sm^ 
liberty of conscience and worship to all who live civilly." They fur- 
ther saj-, that " this colonj', which admits of all religions, even Quakers 
and Generalists, was begun by such as the Massachusetts would not 
suffer to live among them, and is generally hated by the other colonies, 
who endeavoured several ways to suppress tliem." 

The answer of the colony in 1680, to the enquiries of the commis- 
sioners for foreign plantations as slated by Chalmers, is a farther con- 
firmation of the correctness of this sutement, in which they say, that 
all of different persuasions and principles " enjoy their liberty accord- 
ing to his Majesty's gracious charter." " We leave every man to walk 
as God shall persuade their hearts, and do activel}', impassively yield 
obedience to the civil magistrate." Though Chalmers, supposing the 
law relative to Roman Catholics to have been passed in 1663-4, consi- 
ders this answer to have been a designed concealment of that act. 

Thus you have positive and undubitable evidence, that the law ex- 
cluding Roman Catholics from the privileges of freemen was not passed 
in 1633-4, but that they were, by law, at this time, and long after, en- 
titled to all the privileges of other citizens ; and satisfactory evidence, 
that these privileges were continued by law until 1719, when, or in one 
of the subsequt-nt revisions, the words "professing Christiamty" and 
"Jioman Catholics ojiiy excepted," were inserted by the revising commit- 
tee. These words may possibly have been inserted in a manuscript 
copy of the laws sent over in 1699, but of this the words afford no evi- 
dence. 

Roger VVilhams was an assistant (member of the upper house) in the 
years 1664, 1670, and 1671. He was chosen in 1677, but refused to 
serve. He was also a deputy (member of the lower house) in May, 
1667. Tiiese ai-e the only years in which he was in office under the 
second charter. He tiied in 1682; "When he was buried with all the 
solemnity the coh)ny was able to shew." (Callender.) Most of the first 
settlers were dead at this time. Indeed, that such a law should have 
been passed in the lifetime of the first settlers, is hardly credible. Re- 
ligious liberty was their pride and boast. The records abound with 
allusions to it. (See Coll. Mass. Hist. Society, vol. vii. 2d series, pp. 83, 
85, 88, 103-4. See also Hutch. Coll. 154.) The legal enjoyment of it 
was granted and secured at their special request ; and, notwithstanding 
this distinguishing feature in their government was stigmatized with 
the most reproaciiful and opprobrious epithets, they considered it as 
their highest honour ; and themselves in the enjoyment of a natural 
right, denied to the great body of mankind. 

I acknowledge that this account does not exhibit a very flattering view 
of the legislative accuracy of Rhode Island ; but I believe it exhibits a 
true one, and that is my object. It may be proper to add, that each 
revision of the laws appears to have been attended with delays and dis- 
appointments. It was nearly twenty years after the appointment of the 
first committee, for revising and printing the laws, before the publica- 
tion of the first edition. There was no printing press in the colony till 
1745, and no newspaper printed till 1758. The colony was frequently 
pressed by the government in England for copies of their laws and other 
proceedings, and, in 1699, they sent over a copy of the laws in manu- 
script. How, or from what originals they were made up, does not ap- 
pear. As usual, it was done by a committee. A list of the laws was 
ordered to be left in the seci'etary's office, but is not now to be found. 

I would also suggest, that it appears at all times to have been an im- 
portant object with the colony to be on the best terms with the mother 
country. Being poor, of small extent of territory, and in contention 
with the bordering colonies, both on account of its boundaries and 

Vol. I. — 3 I 



*'5'* NOTES. 

PART I. tolerating principles, it required the special protection of the British ga- 
>.^-v'-^^ vernment. I am inclined to think, that tlie exception of Roman Catho- 
lics in the printed laws (1745,) was inserted with the view of ingratiating 
tiie colony the more with the mother countr}'. I have no evidence of 
this but the general tenor of the laws, and the spirit of liberality which 
they always manifest on religious subjects. In 1696, a letter was re- 
ceived from William Blaithwait, containing a form of association, recom- 
mended to be entered into, to defend the king against the conspiracies 
of the papists, "in consequence of the discovery of the late horrid con- 
spiracy against his majesty," (the assassination plot). It does not ap- 
pear, however, that the general assembly took any steps about it. Why 
a law should be passed to exclude from the privileges oifvecmen, those 
who were not inhabkants, by those who believed uU to be equally enti- 
tled to their religious opinions, is difficult to conceive, unless for the 
purpose above suggested. There were no Roman Catholics in the co- 
lony in 1680. (Chalmers, 284.) That this colony was an asylum for the 
persecuted of all i-eligions, as well of those of none, is evident from 
Cotton Mather, who says, anno, 1695, " Rhode Island colony is a collec- 
tion of Antinomians, Familists, Antisabbatarians, Arminians, Socinians, 
Quakers, Ranters, and every thing but Roman Catholics and true ©hris- 
tians." Douglass, vol. ii. 110, 112. The same fact is established by the 
testimony of others of the old writers, who speak of the colony with the 
utmost contempt on that account, and also by the evidence of the colo- 
nial records. In the proceedings of June session, 1584, is this entry, 
"In answer to the petition of Simon Medus, David Brown, and associ- 
ates, being Jews, presented to this assembly, bearing date June 24, 
16S4, * we declare they may expect as good protection here as any 
stranger, not being of our nation, residing among us, in this his majesty's 
colony, ought to have, being obedient to his majesty's laws.' " These 
Jews are supposed to have l-een Portuguese. 

On the revocation of the edict of Nantz, many of the Hugonots set- 
tled in this colony. In the proceedings of February session, 1689-90, 
is this enti-y : " Ordered, that the F'renchmen that reside at Narragan- 
sett be sent for by Major John Greene, to what place in Warwick he 
shall appoint, to signify unto them the king's pleasure, in his proclama- 
tioji of war (against France,) and his indulgence to such Frenchmen as 
behave themselves well, aufl require their engaeements thereunto." 

It is observable, that the laws of the colony never made any provision 
for ascertaining any other qualification of a freeman, than competency 
of estate, and that no test or oath could ever be required by law of any 
man in any case, 
wiw^'^There is one trait in the laws of the first settlers of this colony, which 
places them, as advocates for the equal rights of all men in matters of 
religion, on an elevation above their contemporaries. The liberality 
of the most liberal of the latter is cotifinedto Christiuns, believers in Je- 
sus^ holy church, (Chalmers, 213, 215, 218, 235.) ; that of the former is 
extended to all men of civil conversation, without regard to their opi- 
nions, whether Christians or Jews, believers in Moses, or Jesus, or Ma- 
homet, or neither. The life only, being of competent estate.s, furnished 
to the former evidence of the fitness to be freemen. Chalmers justly 
contends for the equal rights of the Roman Catholics with other Chris- 
tians, and he ought, for the same reasons, to have contended for the 
equal rights of Jews, IMahometans, and all others, whether believers or 
not believers; for their natural rights are certainly equal. 
-'■*' N. B. The records of the colony from 1663 to 1686 are entire. From 
the latter period to 1715, the proceedings of the General Assembly are 
not recorded ; but manuscript copies of the proceedings during this 
period, under the seal of the colony, are in the town clerk's office, and 
some of them in the secretary's office, and have been examined, except 



NOTES. 43 

ibr the year lG92,in which I have found the proccedinnsof one session patj-t 
only. ^^ ri\ivi . 

The foregoing is a copy of a communication from Mr. Samnel Eddy, 
secretary of this state from October, 1797, to iVIay, 1819, and now re- 
presentative in Congress, in reply to enquiries made bv me relative to 
the correctness of the assertion of Chalmers, (PoliticalAnnals, p. 276,) 
that the toleration of Roger Williams and the first settlers, at Pi-ovidence 
and Rhode Island, did not extend to Roman Catholics. 

.TAMES BUR RILL, Jujrn. 

Providence, .May 12, 1815. •— 



(NOTE D. p. 51.) 

It will be thought extraordinary, that IMr. Brougham, who .appears to 
have road our history, and not to be unacquainted with that of England, 
should have hazarded such a statement as the following, in his Colonial 
Policy. " Long after the mother country had relinquished fur ever the 
arts of persecution, they found votaries in the constituted authorities of 
the colonies; and the northern states at the end of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, afforded the disgraceful example of that spiritual tyranny, from 
which theii- territories had originally served as an asylum !"* 'I'he per- 
secutions for witchci'aft, of which 1 have given a full explanation in the 
text, are the only instances of spiritual persecution, if they can be so 
denominated, which disgrace the annals of New England at so late a 
period as the close of the seventeenth century. None took ]ilace after- 
wards, in any of the colonies, except in New York, where the royal go- 
vernor, Lord Cornbury, of detested memory, attempted to stifle the 
Presbyterian worship ;f and in Maryland, against the Catholics, at the 
instigation of the British government. It is true, that the legislatures 
of Massachusetts and New York passed each, in the first year of the 
eighteenth century, a law proscribing Catholic priests ; but the motive 
was political ; it being believed that those priests laboured uniformly to 
excite the Indians to hostilities against the Anglo-Americans. No doubt, 
the spirit of intolerance continued for some time to prevail, in a greater 
or less degree, against poptry, alternately the bugbear and the stalk- 
ing-horse of the British rulers. They, however, not only studiously 
fomented, but exacted that spirit in the colonies; where, as we have 
seen in the last Note, it was even thought necessary to counterfeit per- 
secution, in order to retain their favour. 

The author of the Colonial Policy has not specified the period at 
which the mother country relinquished for ever the arts of persecution; 
and after which the constituted authorities of the colonies cultivated 
them ; but he is to be understood as referring to the end of the seven- 
teenth century. His accuracy, or his candour, will be illustrated bj-- 
the following extracts, which I make from an article of the Edinburgh 
RevieWjt commonly ascribed to his pen. 

" The arms of William III. overthrew the last remnant of Catholic 
government or ascendancy in Britain and Ireland ; and, by the articles 
in Limerick, which closed the scene of hostility in 1691, it was ex- 
pressly stipulated, that the Roman Catholics should enjoy such privi- 
leges, in the exercise of their religion, as are consistent with the laws 

* B. T. p. 1. \ See Smith's Histoi-y of New York, vol. iii. p. 119. 
i Volume for 1807. Article on Catholic Question. 



NOTES, 

of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles 11. ; and their 
majesties, as soon as tliey can summon a parliament in tliis kingdom^ 
will endeavour to procui-e tlie said Roman Catholics such further security 
in that particular as may preserve them from any disturi)ance on account 
of their religion. This solemn instrument of pacification, liranted in the 
moment of victory, was ratified and publisl;e.d in letters patent, under 
the great seal, in the fourth year of king William ; anO in three years 
thereafter, was passed, in direct violation of it, the famous act for pre- 
venting the growth of poperj', the foundation and model of the many 
barbarous enactments by wliich tiiat race of men were oppressed for 
little less than a century thereafter." 

" By this barbarous act, and the statutes by which it was followed up, 
Catholics were disabled from purchasing or inheriting land, — from 
being guaniians to their own children, — from having arms or horses, — 
from serving on grand juries, — from entering in the inns of court, — 
from practising as barristers, solicitors, or physicians, &c. &c." 

"At the close of the reign of Queen Anne, in short, when the privi- 
leges and liberties of Englishmen stood on so triumphant a footing, 
nothing remained to two-thirds of the inhabitants of Ireland, by which 
they could be distinguished from slaves or aliens, but the right of voting 
at elections. Of this, too, they were deprived under the succeeding 
sovereigns." 

The following account of the above mentioned act, and of some of 
its effects, given in Mr. Burke's speech of 1780, at Bristol, previous to 
the election, is a slill more pointed commentary upon the assertion that 
the arts of persecution were relinquished in Great Britain,/or ever, at 
the endofthe seventienth century 

"A statute was fabricated," says Mr. Burke, "in the year 1699, by 
which the saying mass (a church service, in the Latin tongue, not ex- 
actly the same as our liturgy, but very near it, and containing no olfence 
against the laws, or against good morals,) was forged into a crime pu- 
nishable with perpetual imprisonment. The teaching school, an use- 
ful and virtuous occupation, even the teaching in a private family, was, 
jn every Catholic, subjected to the same unproportionate punishment— 
Your industry, and the bread of your children, were taxed for a pecuni- 
ary T' ward to stimulate avarice to do what nature refused, to inform 
and prosecute on this law— Every Roman Catholic was, under the same 
act, to forfeit his estate to his nearest Protestant relation, until, through 
a profession of what he did not believe, he redeemed, by his hypocrisy, 
what the law had transferred to the kinsman as a recompense of his 
profligacy. When thus turned out of doors from his paternal estate, 
he was disabled from acquiring any other by any industry, donation, or 
charity; but was rendered a foreigner in his native land, only because 
he retained the religion, along with the property, handed down to him 
from those who had been the old inhabitants of that land before him." 

" The effects of the act have been as mischievous, as its origin was 
shameful. From that time, every person of that communion, lay and 
ecclesiastic, has been obliged to fly from the face of day. The clergy, 
concealed in garrets of private houses, or obliged to take a shelter 
(hardly safe to themselves, but infinitely dangerous to their country,) 
imder the privileges of foreign ministers, officiated as their servants, 
and under their protection. The whole body of the Catholics, con- 
demned to begg.iry and to ignorance in their native land, have been 
(ibliged to learn the principles of letters, at the hazard of all their other 
principles, from the charity of your enemies. They have been taxed 
to their ruin, at the pleasure of necessitous and profligate relations, and 
according to the measure of their necessity and profligacy. Examples, 
of this are many and affecting. Some of them are known by a friend 
who stands near me in this hall. It is but six or seven vears since a 



NOTES. 437 

cWrgyman, of the name of Malony, a man of morals, neither guilty, nor PART I, 
accused of any thing noxious to the state, was condemned to perpetual s^rw'^^,^ 
imprisonment for exercising the functions of his religion; and, after 
lying in jail two or three years, was relieved by the meicy of govern- 
ment from perpetual imprisonment, on condition of perpetual banish- 
ment. A brother of the earl of Shrewsbury, a Talbot, a nume respect- 
able in this country, whilst its glory is any part of its concern, was 
hauled to the bar of the Old Bailey, among common felons, and only 
escaped the same doom, either by some error in the process, or that 
the wretch who brought him tiiere could not correctly describe his 
person ; I now forget which," &c. (See on this subject — Note V.) 



(NOTE E. p. 86.) 

"On the 14th of December, 1795," says Bryan Edwards (Hist, of W. 
Indies, b. ii ) "the British commissioners who went to the Havanna for 
cssistance, arrived at Montego Bay with forty chasseurs or Spanish 
hunters (chiefly people ot colour) and abuui one hundred Spanish dogs." 
Their number was really one hundred and twenty according to Dallas, 
and a great proportion of them not regularly trained, so that the fugi- 
tive wl^om they overlook could not escape being torn in pieces by them. 
The following compact is copied from Dulias's History, (vol ii ) — 

" Articles of Agreement between his Britannic Majesty's Commissary 
and the undersigned Spanish Chasseurs. 

"1st. We, the undersigned, oblige ourselves to go to the island of 
Jamaica, taking each three dogs for the htintinjs: and seizing negroes. — 
2d. That, when arrived at the said island, and informeil of the situation 
of the runaway or rebellious negroes, we oblige ourselves to practice 
every means that may be necessary to pursue, and to appreliend with our 
dogs, said rebellious negroes. — 3(1. Our stay in the island shill be three 
months. — 4th. If, at the expiration of our being three months in the 
island of Jamaica, government should consider our residence there for 
a longer time necessary, it then shall be at our option to make a new. 
agreement," &c. [Here follows the signatures, &c,] 



(NOTE F. p. 92.) 

"To his most excellent majesty George, King of Great Britain, Sec 
&c. 

"The humble petition of his subjects, the late French inhabitants of 
Nova Scotia, formerly settled on the Bay of Minasand rivers thereunto 
belonging ; now residing in the province of Pennsylvania, on behalf of 
themselves and ye rest of the late inhabitants of the said bay, and also of 
those formerly settled on the river of AnnapoHs-Royal, wheresoever 
dispersed. 

" May it please your Majesty, 

"It is not in our power sufficiently to trace back the conditions upon 
which our ancestors first settled in Nova Scotia, under the protection of 
your majesty's predecessors, as the greatest part of our elders who 
were acquainted with these transactions are dead, but more especially 
because our papers, which contained our contracts, records, &c. were 
by violence taken from us, some time before the unhappy catastrophe 



NOTES. 

which has been tlie occasion of the calamities we are now under, but 
, we always understood the foundation thereof to be from an agreement 
made between your majesty's commanders in Nova Scotia, and our fore- 
fathers, about the year 1713, whereby they were permitted to remain 
in the possession of their lands, under an oath of fidelity to the British 
government, with an exemption from bearing arms, and the allowance 
oi'the fre^ exercise of their religion. 

"It is a matter of certainty, (and within the compass of some of our 
memories,) that in the year 1730, general Phihps, the governor of Nova 
Scotia, did in your majesty's name confirm unto us, and all the inhabi- 
tants of the whole extent of the bay of JMinas and rivers thereunto be- 
longing, the free and entire possession of those lands we were then 
possessed of, which by grants from the former French government we 
held to us and our heirs forever, on paying the customary quit-rents, &c. 
And on condition that we should behave with due submission and fidelity 
to 5 our majesty, agreeable to the oath which was then administered to 
us, whicli is as follows, viz. 

" We sincerely promise and swear by the faith of a Christian, that 
" we shall be entirely faithful, and will truly submit ourselves to his 
*' majesty king George, whom we acknowledge as sovereign lord of 
" New Scotland, or Arcadia ; so God help us." 

•' .\nd at the same time, the said general Philips did, in like manner, 
promise the said French iniiabilants in your majesty's name, ' That they 
should have the true exercise of tlieir religion, and be exempted from 
bearing arms and from being employed in war either against the French 
or Indiitus ' Under the sanction of this solemn engagement we held our 
lands, made further purchases, annually paying our quit-rents, &c., and 
we had the greatest reason to conclude that your majesty did not disap- 
prove of the above agreement : and that our conduct continued during 
a long course of years to be such as recommended us to your gracious 
protection, and to the regard of the governor of New England, appears 
from a printed declaration made seventeen years after tliis time, by his 
excellency William Shirley, governor of New England, which was pub- 
lished and dispersed in our country, some originals of which have 
escaped from the general destruction of most of our papers, part of 
which is as follows. 

"By his Majesty's command, 

" A declaration of William Shirley, Esq. captain-general and governor 
in chief, in and over his majesty's province of Massachusetts Bay, &c. 

"To his majesty's subjects the French inhabitants of his province of 
Nova Scotia : Whereas, upon being informed that a report had been pro- 
pagated among his majesty's subjects the French inhabitants of his 
province of Nova Scotia, that there was an intention to remove them 
from the'iT settlements in that province, I did, by my declaration, dated 
16th September, 1746, signify to them that the same was groundless, 
and that I was on the contrary persuaded that his majesty would be gra- 
ciously pleased to extend his royal protection to all such of thera as 
sliould continue in their fidelity and allegiance to him, and in no wise 
abet or hold correspondence with the enemies of his crown, and there- 
in assured them that I would make a favourable representation of their 
state and circumstances to his majesty, and did accordingly transmit a 
representation thereof to be laid before him, and have thereupon re- 
ceived his royal pleasure, touching his aforesaid subjects in Nova Scotia, 
with his express commands to signify the same to them in his name : 
Now by virtue thereof, and in obedience to his majesty's said orders, I 
do hereby declare in his majesty's name, that there is not the least foun- 
dation for any apprehensions of his majesty's intending to remove them, 
the said inhabitants of Nova Scotia, from their said settlements and ha- 



NOTES. 

'iitations within the said province, but that on the contrary, it is lii.s ma- 
jesty's resohition to protect and maintain all such of them as have ad- 
hered to, and shall continue in their duty and allegiance to him in the 
quiet and peaceable possession of their respective habitations and set- 
tlements, and in the enjoyment of their rights and privileges as his sub- 
jects, &c, &c. 

" Dated at Boston, the 21st of October, 1747. 

" And this is farther confirmed by a letter dated 29lh June, in the same 
year, wrote to our deputies by Mr. Mascarine, then your majesty's chief 
commander in Nova Scotia, which refers to governor Shirley's first de- 
claration, of which we have a copy legally authenticated, part of which 
is as follows, viz. 

*' ' As to the fear you say you labour under on account of being threat- 

* ened to be made to evacuate the country, you have in possession his 
'excellency William Shirley's printed letter, whereby you may be 

* made easy in that respect : you are sensible of the promise 1 have 
*made to you, the effects of which you have already felt, that I would 
'protect you so long as by your good conduct and fidelity to the crown 
' of Great Britain you would enable me so to do, which promise I do 
' again repeat to you.' 

"Near the time of the pubhcation of the before mentioned declara- 
tion, it was required that our deputies should, on behalf of all the peo- 
ple, renew the oath formerly taken to general Philips, which was done 
without any mention of bearing arms — and we can with truth say, that 
we are not sensible of any alteration in our disposition or conduct since 
that time, but that we always continued to retain a grateful regard to 
your majesty and your government, notwithstanding which we have 
found ourselves surrounded with difficulties unknown to us before. 
Your majesty determined to fortify our province and settle Halifax; 
which the French looking upon with jealousy, they made frequent in- 
cursions through our country in order to annoy that settlement, where- 
by we came exposed to many straits and hardships ; yet from the obli- 
gations we were under, from the oath we had taken, we were never 
under any doubt but that it was our indispensible duty and interest to 
remain true to your government and our oath of fidelity, hoping that in 
time those difficulties would be removed, and we should see peace and 
tranquillity restored : and if, from the change of affairs in Nova Scotia, 
your majesty had thought it not consistent with the safety of your said 
province, to let us remain there upon the terms promised us by your 
governors, in your majesty's name, we should doubtless have acquiesced 
with any other reasonable proposal which might have been made to us, 
consistent with the safety of our aged parents and tender uives and 
children ; and we are persuaded if that had been the case, wherever we 
liad retired, we should have held ourselves under the strongest obliga- 
tions of gratitude from a thankful remembiance of the happiness we had 
enjoyed under your majesty's administration and gracious protection. 
About the time of the settlement of Halifax, general Cornwallis, go- 
vernor of Nova Scotia, did require that we siiould take the oath of al- 
legiance without the exemption before allowed us, of not bearing armsi, 
but tliis we absolutely refused, as being an infringement of the princip^ 
condition upon which our forefathers agreed to settle under the British 
government. 

" And we acquainted governor Cornwallis that if your majesty was 
not willing to continue that exemption to us, we desired liberty to eva- 
cuate the countiy, proposing to settle on the island of St. John's, where 
the French government was willing to let u.s have land, which proposal 
he at that time refused to consent to, but told us he would acquaint your 
majesty therewith, and return us an answer. But ws never received 



40 NOTES. . 

^ART I. an answer, nor was any proposal of that made to us until w^were madd 
,<r-v>^ prisoners. / 

" After the settlement of Halifax, we suffered many almses and in- 
sults from your majesty's enemies, more especially from tlie Indians in 
the interest of the French, by whom our cattle was killed, our houses 
pillaged, and many of us personally abused and put in fear of our lives, 
and some even carried away prisoners towards Canada, solely on ac. 
count of our resolution steadily to maintain our oath of fidelity to the 
English government, particularly Ueiie Leblanc (our public notary,) was 
taken prisoner by the Indians vvjicn actually travelling in your majesty's 
service, his house pillaged, and himself carried to the French fort, from 
whence he did not recover his hberty but with great difficulty, after 
four years captivity. 

« vVe were likewise obliged to comply with the demand of the ene- 
my, made for provision, cattle, &c. upon pain of military execution, 
which we had reason to believe the government was made sensible was 
not an act of choice on our part, but of necessity, as those in authority 
appeared to take in good part the representations we always made to 
them after any thing of that nature had happened. 

"Notwithstandmg the many difficulties we thus laboured under, yet 
we dare appeal to the several governors, both at Halifax and Annapolis- 
Royal, for testimonies of our being always ready and willing to obey 
their orders, and give all the assistance in our power, either in furnish- 
ing provisions and materials, or making roads, building forts, &c. agree- 
able to your majesty's orders, and our oath of fidelity, whensoever cal- 
led upon, or required thereunto. 

" It was also our constant care to give notice to your majesty's com- 
manders of the danger they from time to time have been exposed to 
by the enemy's troojjs, and had the intelligence we gave been alsvays 
attended to, many lives might have been spared, particularly in the un- 
liappy affair, which befel major Noble and his brother at Grand-Pray, 
when they, with great numbers of their men, were cut off by the ene- 
my, notwithstanding the frequent advices we had given them of the 
danger they were in ; and yet we have been very unjustly accused as 
parties in that massacre. 

" And although we have been thus anxiously concerned to manifest 
our fidelity in these several respects, yet it has been falsely insinuated, 
that it had been our general practice to abet and support your majesty's 
enemies ; but we trust that your majesty will not suffer suspicions and 
accusations to be received as proofs sufficient to reduce some thousands 
of innocent people, from the most happy situation to a state of the 
greatest distress and misery! No, this was far from our thoughts; we 
esteemed our situation so happy as by no means to desire a change 
We have always desired, and again desire tiial we may be permitted to 
answer our accusers in a judicial way. In the mean time permit us Sir, 
here solemnly to declare, that these accusations are utterly false and 
groundless, so far as they concern us as a collective body of people. 
It hath been always our desire to live as our fathers hath done, as faith- 
ful subjects under your majesty's royal protection, with an unfeigned 
resolution to maintjxin our oath of fidelity to the utmost of our power. 
Yet it cannot be expected, but that amongst us, as well as amongst other 
people, there have been some weak and f^ilse -hearted persons suscepti- 
ble of being bribed by the enemy so as to break the oath of fidelity. 
Twelve of these were outlawed in governor Shirley's proclamation be- 
fore mentioned; but it will be found that the number of such false- 
hearted men amongst us were very few, considering our situation, the 
number of our inhabitants, and how we stood circumstanced in several 
respects : and it may easily be made appeal-, that it was the constan* 



NOTES. 441 

care of our deputies to prevent and put a stop to such wicked conduct PART I. 
when it came to their knowledf^e. \_^'-\'^*^_/ 

" We understood that the aid granted to the Frencli by the inhabi- 
tants ofChignecto liHS been used as an argument to accek rate our ruin; 
but we trust that your majesty will not permit the innocent to be in- 
volved with theg-uihy; no consequence can be justly drawn, that be- 
cause those people yielded lo tlie tiu-eats and persuasions otthe enemy, 
we shoidd do the same. Tliey were situated so tar from Halifax as to be 
in a great measure out of the pi'otection of the English government, 
which was not our case ; we were separated from them by sixty miles 
of uncultivated land, and had no other connexion with them than what 
is usual with neighbours at such a distance ; and we can truly say we 
looked on their defection from your majesty's interest with great pain 
and anxiety. Nevertheless, not long before our being made prisoners, 
the house in which we kept our contracts, records, deeds, &c. was in- . 
vested with an armed force, and all our papers violently carried away, 
none of which have to this day been returned us, whereby we are in a 
great measure defirived of means of making our innocency and the just- 
ness of our cotnplainls appear in their true light. 

" Upon our sending a remonstrance to the governor and coimcil of 
the violence that iiad been ofFereil us by the seizure of our papers, and 
ef the groundless fears the government appeared to be under on our 
account, by their taking away our arms, no answer was returned us ; but 
tJiose who had signed the remonstrance, and some time after sixty 
more, in all about eighty of our elders, were sununoned to appear be- 
fore the governor and council, which they immediately complied with, 
and it was required of them that they should tnke the oaili of allegiance, 
without the exemption, which, during a course of near fifty years, had 
been granted to us and to oiir fathers, of not being oiiliged to bear 
arms, and which was the principal condition upon which our ancestors 
agreed to reinain in Nova Scotia, when the rest of the French inhabi- 
tants evacuated the coiuitry, which, as it was contrarj to our inclination 
and judgment, we thought ourselves engaged in diUy absolutely to re- 
fuse. Nevertlieless, we freely offered, and would gladly have renewed, 
oisiroath of fidelity, but this was not accepted of, and we were all im- 
mediately made prisoners, and were told by tiie governor, that our 
estates, both real and personal, were forfeited for your m.ijesty'.s use. 
As to th(!se who remained at home, they were summoned to ajjpear 
before the commanders in the forts, which, we showing some fear to 
comply with, on the account of the seizure of our papers, and impri- 
sonment of so many of our elders, we had the greatest assurance given 
us that tliere was no other design but to make us renew our former oath 
of fidelity ; yet as soon as we were within the fort, the same judgment 
was passed on us as had been passed on our brethren at Halifax, and we 
were also made prisoners. 

" Thus, notwithstanding the solemn grants made to our fathers by 
general Philips, and the declaration made by governor Shirley and Mr. 
Mascarine in your majesty's name, that it was your majesty's resolution 
to protect and maintam all such of us as should continue in their duty 
and allegiance to your majesty, in the quiet and peaceable possession of 
their settlements, and the enjoyment of all their rights and privileges, 
as your majesty's subjects ; we found ourselves at once deprived of 
our estates ami liberties, without any judicial process, or even without 
any accusers appearing against us, and this solely grounded on mistaken 
jealousies and false suspicions that we are inclinable to take part with 
your majesty's enemies. But we again decl;u'e that that accusation is 
groundless ; it was always oui fixed resolution to maintain to the utmost 
of our power the oath of fidelity which we had taken, not only from a 
sense of indispensable duty, but also because we were well satisfied with 

Vol. I.— 3 K 



NOTES. 

our situation under your majesty's government and protection, and did 
aot think it could be bettered by any change which could be proposed 
to us. It has also been falsely insinuated that we heltl the opinion that 
we might be absolved from our oath so as to break it with impunity ; 
but this we likevvise solemnly declare to be a false accusation, and which 
we i)luinly evinced, by our exposing ourselves to so great losses and 
sufferings, rather than take the oath proposed to the governor and 
council, because we apprehended we could not in conscience comply 
therewith. 

" Thus we, our ancient parents and grand parents, (men of great in- 
tegrity anil approved fidelity to your majesty,) and our innocent wives 
and children, became the unhappy victims to those groundless fears : 
we were transporled into the English colonies, and this was done in so 
much haste, and with si> little regard to our necessities and the tenderest 
ties of nature, that from the most social enjoyments and affluent cir- 
cumstances, many found themselves destitute of the necessaries of life: 
Parents were separated from childien, and husbands from wives, some 
of whom have not to this day inet again ; and we were so crowded in the 
transport vessels, that we had not room even for all our bodies to lay 
down at once, and consequently were prevented from carrying with us 
proper necessaries, especially for the support and comfort of the aged 
and weak, many of wliom quickly ended their misery with their lives. 
And even those amongst us who had suffered deeply from your majesty's 
enemies, on account of their attachment to your majesty's government, 
were equally involved in the common calamity, of which Rene Lablane, 
the notary public before mentioned, is a remarkable instance. He was 
seized, confined, and brought away among the rest of the people, and 
his family, consisting of tiventy childrtn, and about one hundred and fifty 
grand children, were scattered in different colonies, so that he ivas put 
on shore at JYexu York -with only his loife and two youngest children, in 
an infirm slate of health, from whence he joined three more of his 
children at Philadelphia, where he died without any more notice being 
taken of him than any of us, notwithstanding his many years labour and 
deep sufferings for your majesty's service. 

" The miseries we have since endured are scarce sufficiently to be 
expressed, being reduced for a liveliiiood to toil and hard labour in a 
southern clime, so disagreeable to our constitutions, that most of us 
have been prevented by sickness from procuring the necessary subsist- 
ence for our families, and therefore are threatened with that which we 
esteetn the greatest aggravation of all our sufferings, even of having 
our children forced from us, and bound out to strangers, and exposed 
to contagious distempers unknown in our native country. 

"This, compared with the affluence and ease we enjoyed, shows our 
condition to be extremely wretched. We have already seen in this 
province of Pennsylvania two hundred and fifty of our people, which is 
more than half the nuinber that were landed here, perish through misery 
and various diseases. In this great distress and misery, we have, under 
God, none but your majesty to look to with hopes of relief and redress : 
We therefore hereby implore your gracious protection, and request you 
may be pleased to let the justice of our complaints be truly and impar- 
tially enquired into, and that your majesty would please to grant us such 
relief as in your justice and clemency you will think our case requires, 
and we shall hold ourselves bound to pray," Sec. 

This pathetic appeal of the Acadians had not the least efTect with the 
Britisli government. When Jasper Mauduit, agent of tiie province of 
jVlassachijsetts, represented to Mr, Grenville, tlie British Minister, that 
his most Christian majesty, looking upon the Acadians as of the number 
of those who had been his most faithful subjects, had signified his wil- 



NOTES. 



443 



iingness to order transports for conveying them to France, from the PART I. | 
British provinces, Mr. Gr^ville inimediutely said — " that cannot be — s^^^-y^,/ ,. 
that is contrary to our acts of navigation — how can the Frencii court 
send ships to our colonies ?" (See the letter of Jasper Manduil, dated 
Dec. ires, to the Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Kepresenta- 
tives — in the vol. of the Mass. Hist. Coll. for l/'99. 



(NOTE G. p. 113.) 

"The English made, in 1745, an important conquest, which they 
considered as an ample indemnification for the losses which the allies 
had suffered in the low countries : it was that of Cape Breton," 8cc. 
Koch. Histoire Abregee des Traites de Paix. Vol. ii. 

In the negotiations of 1748, France prescribed the restitution of Louis- 
bourg as the first article of a pacification. It was the first point taken 
up by the plenipoteritiaries at Aix la Chapelle ; and the British minister 
stated at once the readiness of England to restore it, for certain equi- 
valents. We have the following account in that instructive work, His- 
toire de la Diplomatic Frangaise, (b. v. vol. 5 ) 

" A memoir was sent by the French com-t to the Count St, Severin, 
its minister at Aix la Chapelle, upon the indispensable necessity of Cape 
Breton to France, and upon the fital consequences of leaving that 
island in the hands of the English, in relation to the free trade of Canada 
and Louisiana, and the general trade of the other powers of Europe." 
"It will be the more necessary," said the official instructions, " to show 
merely a moderate wish to recover the island, as we know tliat England 
has it not much at heart to retain her conquest. The Coiml St. Sev'erin 
may tlien give the Earl of Sandwich to understand, that the loss of 
Cape Breton is less important in itself, than on account of the stress 
laid upon it by the public opinion in France ; and that the king does 
not attach so much consequence to the matter himself, as not to prefer 
an equivalent in the low countries," &c. 

It is stated in the work from which I have made these quotations, 
that the British court proposed to France, in 1755, that the whole 
southern bank of the river St. Lawrence should remain uninhabited, and 
the lakes unappropriated. " The pretext of the war of 1756," says die 
same work, " on the part of England, was the encroacliment of the 
French on the limits of Acadia, and some acts of violence committed on 
the Ohio ; but the real motive was to avail herself of the supposed 
weakness of the cabinet of Versailles, to destroy the French navy, and 
to avenge the defeats of Fontenoy and of Lawfeldt. (Vol. vi. b. 1.) 



(NOTE H. p. 119.) 

BRABDOcit's papers all fell into the hands of the French. In the year 
1757, there was made and published in Philadciphi'i, a translation of 
three French volumes found on board a French privateer, ami contain- 
ing authenticated copies of those papers. Tliey throw gr.-at rght upon 
the origin of his expedition, and do not redouf.d to ilie credit of the 
British government for good failh in its negotiation with France, preli- 
minary to the war of 1756. A few extracts from (he instructions given 
to Braddock, and his correspondence with his government, may serve 
to amuse the American reader. 



iS'OTES. 

*' His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland," says the letter of irt' 
structions of November 25, 1754, "recommends to you that it be con- 
stantly observed anions^ the troops under your command, to be particu- 
larly careful that they be not throivn into a panic by tlie Indians, with 
which thev are yet unacquainted, whom tbe French will certainly em- 
ploy to frighten ihein. HisKoyal Highness rrcommends to you the visit- 
ing your posts night and day, tiiat your colonels and other officers be 
careful to doit, and that you yourself frequently set them the example^ 
and give all your troops plainly to understand tliut no excuse rdll be ad- 
mitted for any surprise whatsoever . 

Part of a letter from General Braddock, to the Hon. Thomas JRobinson. 

" Alexandria, 19th of April, 1755. 

" Governor Shirley will acquaint you, sir, of the expense of JVew £72^-- 
/a/ic/ upon the prodigiotis levy of men that has been made in these go- 
vernments, yor the enterprises of the north, tbe other governors have done 
very little, or rather nothing. I cannot but take the liberty to repre- 
sent to you the necessity of laying a tax upon all his majesty's dominions 
in Jlmerica, agreeably to the result of council, for reimbursing the great 
sums that must be advanced for the service and interest of the colonies 
in this important crisis." 

From the same to the same. 

" Fort Cumberland, (at Will's Creek,) 

June 5th, 1755. 

" I have at last assembled all the troops destined for the attack of 
Fort dn Quesne, which amount to two thousand effective men, of which 
there are eleven hundred furnished by the southern provinces, tuho have 
so little courage and disposition, that scarce any military sei^ice can be ex- 
pected from them, though I have employed the best officers to form 
them." 

" I desired Mr. B. Franklin, Post-Master of Pennsylvania, who has 
great credit in the provinces, to hire me one hundred and fifty wag- 
gons and the number of horses necessary, which he did with so much 
goodness and readiness, that it is almost the first instance of integrity, 
addres.s, and ability that I have seen in all these provinces." 



(NOTE I. p. 125 ) 

His Excellency the Commander in Chief, the Earl of Loudon, though 
of a very lordly carriage towards the provincials, was unable to stifle 
the petuience of their press. The newspapers of their large towns 
carped and sneered at his operations, in a manner that might iiave pro- 
voked the master of fewer legions to exert a vigour beyond the law. 
The following piece published in the New York gazette, during his 
presence in that city, shows the boldness of the censorsliip exercised 
over tl^e management of the British commanders, and furnishes a good 
sketch of the first campaigns of the war. 

Extract of a letter from JVew York, to a gentleman in London, dated JVew- 
York, August 26, 1757. 

"Tiie situation of aflairs in .\merica, grow more and more danger- 
ous; and what makes us despair of seeing things mend, is that, by I 



NOTES. 

know not what fatality of conduct in our commanders, the more we are 
strengthened with land forces from Great Brilain, the more ground we 
lose against the French, whose number of regular troops is, according 
to the best information we can get here, much inferior to ours. 

"To give you some idea of this, all the success we can pretend to 
boast of in the course of this war, happened in the two frst years of it, 
when we had not a fourth part of the regular troops we now have, and 
the French had at least an equal number in Canada and Louisbourg. 

" Our campaign in 1755, opened with an expedition against the en- 
croachments of the French in Nova Scotia, with about four hundred 
troops of the three regiments posted here, and two thousand New- 
England irregulars, fitted out from Boston ; which was conducted in 
such a manner, that the French forts upon the isthmus v.'ere soon sur- 
rendered to us ; their garrisons transported to Louisbourg ; one of their 
forts upon the river St. John, abandoned by them, and their settlements 
about it broken up ; and in the same year our own fortifications were 
advanced towards Montreal as far as lake St. Sacrament, now lake 
George, as in the preceding year they had likewise begun to be upon 
the river Kennebeck, towards the metropolis of Canada : — And the 
French general Deiskau, wiio came from France that year with about 
three thousand troops, and had begun his march to invest Oswego, was 
prevented from making an attempt upon it, and defeated in his attack 
upon our camp at Lake George ; and in the year 1756, a large party of 
French regulars, Canadians and Indians, which attacked by surprise a 
party of our balteaux men, upon tiie river Onondago, were entirely de- 
feated by an inferior number of them. 

" No sooner were our forces increased by those which arrived here 
from Europe with general Abercrombie, in June, 1756, but things took 
a very different turn. Thougii timely information was given, that a 
large French camp was formed within about thirty miles of Oswego, 
with intent speedily to attack it ; yet, by some unaccountable delay to 
send it a reinforcement, that most material place was lost ; General 
Webb, who did at last embark with one for its relief, not setting out 
till two days before it was taken. 

"Our next misfortune, which followed close upon the heels of this, 
was, that when our general had got as far as the great carrying-place, 
at Oneida, (a pass in the country of the Six Nations,) which was so 
strongly fortified, and so inaccessible to the enemy's artillery, that it 
might have defied the whole French army to take it, he demolished 
the fort and works there in a few days, and retired with his forces to a 
place called the German-Flats, which is sixty miles nearer Albany, and 
soon after to Schenectady, which is no more than seventeen miles from 
that city ; and thereby not only abandoned the Six Nations of Indians, 
and their country, to the enemy, but left the French a free passage 
from Oswego, through the Mohawks river, to Schenectady. — And what 
is still more extraordinary in this, is, that whilst the general was de- 
mohshing the works at this carrying-place, and retiring back to Sche- 
nectady, the French were as busy in demolishing the works at Oswego, 
and retiring from thence back towards Montreal. 

"This precipitate retreat was immediately followed by as fatal a de- 
lay ; for though we had a suflficient force ready to have proceeded that 
year in our expedition against Crown Point, yet we wasted the whole 
season in entrenching at Lake George, and fortifying Fort WiUiam- 
Henry there : the consequence of which was, that we not only lost a 
favourable opportunity for making an attempt against Crown Point, but 
paid for that neglect, by the loss of Fort William-Henry itself, this 
year. 

" This closed our operations in 1756 : The beginning of this year was 
spent in making preparations for the expedition against Louisbourg, 



JSfOTES. 



^RT I. which took us up till the latter end of June ; then our transports sailed 
^-NT-^^j from hence for Halifax, with about six thousand regular troops ; and in 
their passage most miraculously escaped being taken by the French 
ships, which, we are informed, had been about live da\s bei'ore cruiz- 
ing off that harbour. After spending about five weeks at Halifax in 
holding councils of war, the result of them was, to lay aside the expedi- 
tion against Louisbourg. 

" VVIiilst we were employed in making this dangerous passage to Ha- 
lifi'X, and holding councils of war there, Mons. Montcalm took the op- 
portunity of Lord Loudon's absence, and proceeded from Quebec to 
Crown Point, with about ten thousand men, consisting of regular troops, 
Canadians, and Indians ; from whence he made Fort William-Henry a 
visit, which he took, after a siege of about five or six days, and de- 
molished : disabled the garrison, which consisted of about two thousand 
three hundred men, from serving against the French for the space of 
eighteen months; made himself master of our magazines of provision 
and stores ; the former of which were of very great service to the ene- 
my ; and secured the entire possession of the lakes between Lake 
George and Montreal ; finished this business, and retired with his 
army, before the return of Lord Loudon with his troops from Halifax, 
which are expected here every day. 

" Such is the present state of our affairs, the fruits of our two last 
years inactive campaigns, of our want of proper intelligence, and the 
little use we make of what we do get ! we find by woful experience, 
that our great immbers of regular troDps have been of no service, for 
want of proper management ; the French carry all before them : and 
what the next ye&v. will produce, God only knows j I tremble to 
think." 



(NOTE J. p. 131.) 

Every account of these campaigns, which was published in England, 
eontained some fabricated or distorted anecdotes, tending to bi'ing ri- 
dicule or contempt upon the provincials. In Knox's Historical Jour- 
nal,* for instance, the most considerable and esteemed work respecting 
the operations in America from 1756 to 1760, I find such stories as the 
two which I am to quote, and which have neither verisimilitude nor 
poignancy to compensate for their falsehood. 

" March 28, 1758. — Two sail of ships were discovered to cross the 
basin below, and run up Moose and Bear rivers, which being unusual 
for British ships, a boat was sent down for intelligence, and to watch 
their motions. The boat returned, and brought up the masters of the 
two vessels ; they came from fort Cumberland, and are bound to Boston ; 
by them we are informed there is an embargo laid on all the ports of 
New England, New York, Halifax, &c. &c. We hear of great prepa- 
rations for opening the campaign, that there are more troops expected 
from Europe, and that the province of Massachusetts is raising a large 
body of provincials to co-operate with the regulars ; the masters of 
these sloops say, that all is well at. Chegnecto, and also at Fort Edward 
and F'srt Sackville, where they have lately been ; these men farther add, 
that it was reported at Boston, that the particular department of the 

* Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America, for the 
years 1757, 175S, 1759, ^nd 1760, by captain John Knox: dedicated by 
permission, to general Amherst. 2 vols. 4to. 



NOTES. 44 

New England troops this campaign, would be the reduction of Canada ; pART 1 
this was matter of gi-eal mirth to us, and an officer wiio was present, v^->^<^^ 
humorously replied, And let the regulars remaiti in the different forts and 
garrisons, to hew wood and dig sa7id, &c. then the French -will be finely hum- 
bled in America." Vol. i. p. 112 

"December 1st. 1758. — We weighed this morning about eight 
o'clock, and attempted to get out into the bay ; but not consulting the 
proper lime of tide, we were obliged to put back, and come to an an- 
chor ; about noon we weighed again with the tide of ebb, and little 
wind falling, with an agitated seu, occasioned by conflicting currents, 
our transport miSsed stays, and we narrowly escaped being wrecked 
upon a lee shore, where the vessel would probably have been dashed 
to pieces, the western side of the entrance being a complete ledge of 
rocks, the master instantly fell upon his knees, crying out — ' What shall 
we do ? I vow I fear we shall all be lost, let us go to prayers; what can 
we do dear Jonathan r' Jonathan went forward muttering to himself, 
'do — I vow Ebenezer, I don't know what we shall do any more than 
thyself;' when fortunately one of our soldiers, who was a thorough bred 
seamen, and had served several years on board a ship of war, and after- 
wards in a privateer, hearing and seeing the helpless state of mind -which 
our poor JVev) England men luere under, i\ni\ our sloop driving towards 
the shore, called out, ' why d — your eyes and hmbs, — down with her 
sails and let her drive a — e' foremost ; what the devil signifies your cant- 
ing and praying now ?' — Ebenezer quickly taking the hint, called to 
Jonathan to lower the sails, saying, he vowed he beheved that young 
man's advice was very good, but wished he had not dehvered it so pro- 
fanely.' However, it answered to our wish ; every thing that was ne- 
cessary was transacted instantaneously ; the soldier gave directions, and 
seizing the helm, we soon recovered ourselves, cleared the strcight, and 
drove into the bay stern foremost." 

Knox's Hist. Journal, vol. i, p. 217-18. 

The London newspapers were never without '' extracts of letters 
from officers serving in the British army in America," which surpassed 
the formal relations of the war, in ridicule and obloquy of the Ameri- 
cans. A lampoon of this description, published in the London Chroni- / 
cle of May, 1759, drew an answer from Dr. Franklin, which was insert- ^ 
ed in the same paper a few days afterwards. I have not seen this 
characteristic production in any collection of his works, and I therefore 
give it place in this volume, with the aim of which it so happily coin- 
cides. It evidences the staleness, as it explodes the absurdity of those 
contumelious allegations against us, which the same spirit that gave them 
birth at the earliest period, and has never since decUned, now re- 
proaches in the British Journals, 

From the London Chronicle. 

*• Mu. Chronicie, 

■ " SiH, while the public attention is so much turned towards America, 
every letter from thence that promises new information, is pretty ge- 
nerally read ; it seems, therefore, the more necessary that care should 
be taken to disabuse the public, when those letters contain fijcts false 
in themselves, and representations injurious to bodies of people, or 
even to private persons. 

"In your paper, No. 310, I found an extract of a letter, said to be 
from a gentleman in general Abercrombie's army. As there are several 
strokes in it tending to render ihe colonies despicable, and even odious 
to the mother country, which may li:ive ill consequences; and no no- 
tice having been taken of the injuries contained in that letter, other 



> iSIOTES. 

RT I. letters of the same nature have shice been published ; permit me to 

-v-^^ make a few observations on it. 

"The writer says, • New England was settled by Presbyterians and 
Ind.;pen(lents, who took shelter there from the persecutions of Arch- 
bishop Laud ; — they still retaiti their original character, they generally hate 
the Church of England,'' says he-, li is very true, that if some resentment 
stiU remained for the hardships their fathers suffered, it might perhaps 
be not much wondered at ; but the fact is, that the moderation of the 
present Church of England towards dissenters in old as well as New- 
England, has quite eif uced tliose impressions ; the dissenters too are be- 
come less rigid and scrupulous, and the good will between those differ- 
ent bodies in that country, is now both mutual and equal. 

" He goes on : ' They came out with a levelling sjnrit, and they retain it. 
They cannot bear to think that one man should b^ exorbitantly rich, and ano- 
ther poor ; so that, except in the sea-port towns, there are few great estates 
tiinong them. This equality produces also a msticity of manners ; for in their 
lauj^uage, dress, and tn all their behaviour, they are more boorish than any 
thing you ever saxv in a certain northern latitude.' Oiif would imagine from 
this account, that those who were growing poor, plundered those who 
were growing rich, to preserve this equality, and that property had no 
protection ; whereas, in fact, it is no where more secure than in the 
New England colonies, the law is no where better executed, or justice 
obtained at less expense. The equality he speaks of, arises first from 
a more equal distribution of lands by the assemblies in the first settle- 
ment than has been practised in the other colonies, where favourites of 
governors have obtained enormous tracts for trifling considerations, to 
the prejudice both of the crown revenues and the public good ; and se- 
condly, from the nature of their occupation ; husbandmen with small 
tractsof laud, though they may by industry maintain tliemselves and fa- 
milies in mediocrity, having few means of acquiring great wealth, espe- 
cially in a young colony that is to be supplied with its clothing, and 
many other expensive articles of consumption from the motlier country. 
Their dress the gentleman may be a more critical judge of, than I can 
pretend to be : all I know of it is, that they wear the manufacture of 
Britain, and follow its fashions perliaps too closely, every remarkable 
change in the mode making its appearance there within a few months 
after its invention here ; a natural effect of their constant intercourse 
with England, by ships arriving almost every week from the capital, 
their respect for the mother country, and admiration of every thing 
that is British. But as to tiieir hmguage, I must beg this gentleman's 
pardon, if I differ from him. His e.ir, accustomed perhaps to the dia- 
lect practised in the certain northern latitude he mentions, may not be 
qualified to judge so nicely what relates to pm-e English. And ( appeal 
to all Englishmen here, who have been acquainted with the colonists, 
whether it is not a common remark, that they speak the language with 
such an exactness both f)f expression and accent, that thougii you may 
know tlie natives of several of the counties of England, by peculiarities 
in their dialect, you cannot by that means distinguish a North Ameri- 
can. All the new books .^nd pamphlets worth reading, that are pub- 
lished here, in a few weeks are transmitted and found there, where 
there is not a man or woman born in the country but what can read : 
and it inust, I should think, be a pleasing reflection to those who write 
either for the benefit of the present age or of posterity, to find their 
audience increasing with the increase of our colonies ; and their lan- 
guage extending itself beyond the narrow bounds of these islands, to a 
continent larger than all Europe, and to a future empire as fidly peo- 
pled, which Britain may one day probably possess in those vast western 
regions. 

" But the gentleman makes more injurious comparisons than these : 



NOTES. 44i 

* That latitude,' he says, ' has this advantage over them, that it has pro- PART I. 
diu-.ed sh;»rp, acute men, fit for war or learning, whereas, the others are ^^^^ -^ 
remarkably simple or silly, and blunder eternally. We have 6000 of 
their militia, which the general would willingly exchange for 2000 re- 
gulars. They are for ever marring some one or other of our plans, 
when sent to execute them. Tiu-y can, indeed, some of them at least, 
range in the woods; but 300 Indians with their yell, throw 3000 of 
them in a panic, and then they will leave nothing to the enemy to do, 
for they will shoot one another; and in the woods our regulars are 
afraid to be on a command svith them on that very account.' I doubt, 
Mr. Chronicle, that this paragraph, when it comes to be read in Ame- 
rica, will have no good effect ; and rather increase tiiat inconvenient 
disgust which is too apt to arise between the troops of different corps, or 
countries, who are obliged to serve together. Will not a New-England 
officer be apt to retort and say, what foundation have you for this odi- 
ous distinction in favour of the officers from your certain northern lati- 
tude ? They may, as you say, he. fit for learning ; but, surely, the return 
of your first general, with a well appointed and sufficient force, from 
his expedition against Lonisbourg, without so much as seeing the 
place, js not the most shining proof of his talents for -war. And no one 
will say his plan was marred by nis, for we were not with him. — Was his 
successor who conducted the blundering attack, and inglorious retreat 
from liconderoga, a New-England man, or one oi that certain latitude? 
— Then as to the compai'ison between regulars and provincials, will not 
the latter remark, that it was 2000 New-England provincials, with 
about 150 regulars, that took the strong fort of Beausejour, in the be- 
ginning of the war; though in the accounts ti-ansmitted to the English 
Gazette, the honour was claimed by t!ie regulars, and little or no no- 
tice taken of the others. — That it was the provincials who beat general 
Dicskau, with his regulars, Canadians, and 'yelling Indians,' and sent 
him prisoner to England. — That it was a provincial-born officer,* with 
Amei-ican batteaux-men, that beat the French and Indians on Oswego 
river. — That it WnS the same officer, with provincials, who made that 
iongand admirable march into the enemy's country, took and destroy- 
ed Fort Frontenac, with the whole French fleet on the lakes, and 
struck terror into the heart of Canada. — That it was a provincial offi- 
cer,"!" witii provincials only, who made another extraordinary march 
into the enemy's country, surprized and destroyed the Indian town of " 
Kittanning, bringing off the scalps of their chiefs. — That one ranging 
captain of a few provincials, Rogers, has harrassed the enemy more on 
the frontiers of Canada, and destroyed more of their men, tiian the 
whole army of regulars. — That it was the regulars who surrendered 
themselves, with the provincials under their command, prisoners of 
war, almost as soon as they were besieged, with the forts, fleet, and all 
the provisions and stores that had been provided and amassed at so im- 
mense an expense, at Oswego. That it was the regulars who surren- 
dered for' William-Henry, and suffered themselves to be butcliered and 
sculped with arms in their hands. — That it was the r.gidars under 
Braddock, who were thrown into a panic by the ' yells of 3 or 400 In- ' 
dians,' in their confusion shot one another, and, with five times the 
force of the enemy, fled before them, destroying all their own stores, 
ammunition, and provision ! — These regular gentlemen, will the provin- 
cialrangers add, may possibly be afraid, as the say they are, to be on a 
command with us in the woods ; but when it is considered, that from all 
past experience, the chance of our shooting them is not as one to a 
hmtdred, compared with that of their being shot by the enemy ; may it 

* Colonel Bradstjeet. f Colonel Armstrong, of Pennsylvania. 

Vol. I.— 3 L 



NOTES. 

not to be suspected, that what they give as the very account of their fear 
and unwilling'nessto venture out with us, is only the very excuse ; and 
th;it a concern for their scalps weighs more with them than a regard for 
their honour. 

" Such as these, Sir, 1 imagine may be the reflections extorted by such 
provocation, from the provincials in general. But tlie New-England 
men in particular, will have reason to resent the remarks on their re- 
duction of Louisbourg. Your writer proceeds, ' Indeed they are all 
very ready to make their boast of taking Louisbourg, in 1745; but if 
people were to be acquitted or condemned according to the propriety 
and wisdom of their plans, and not according to tlieir success, the per- 
sons that undertook the siege, merited little praise : for I have heard 
officers, \yiio assisted at it, say, never was any thing more rash ; for had 
one single part of their plan tailed, or had the French made the for- 
tieth part of the resistance then that they have made now, every soul of 
the New-Englanders must have fallen in the trenches. The garrison 
was weak, sickly, and destitute of provisions, and disgusted, and there- 
fore became a ready prey: and, when they returned to France, were 
decimated for their gallant defence.' Where then is the glory arising 
from thence .'' — After denying his facts, ' that the garrison was weak, 
wanted provisions, made not a fortieth part of the resistance, were de- 
cimated,' &c. the New-England men will ask this regular gentleman, if 
the place was well fortified, and had (as it really had) a numerous gar- 
rison, was it not at least brave to attack it with a handful of raw undis- 
ciplined militia ? If the garrison was, as you say, ' sickly, disgusted, des- 
titute of provisions, and ready to become a prey,' was it not prudent to 
seize that opportunity, and put the nation in possession of so important 
a fortress, at so small an expense ? So that if you will not allow the en- 
terprize to be, as we think it was, both brave and prudent, ought you 
not at least to grant it was eitfier one or the other ? But is there no merit 
on this score iu the people ; who, though at first so greatly divided, as 
to the making or forbearing the attempt, that it was carried in the af- 
firmative, by the small majority of one vote only ; yet when it was once 
resolved on, unanimonsly prosecuted the design, and prepared the 
means with the greatest zeal and diligence ; so that the whole equip- 
ment was completely ready before the season would permit the execu- 
tion ? Is there no merit of praise in laying and executing their plan so 
well, that, as you have confessed, not a single part of it failed .'' If the 
plan was destitute of ' propriety and wisdoin,' would it not have re- 
quin-d the sharp acute men of \\\tt northern latitude io execute it, that by 
supplying its deficiencies thev might give it some chance of success ? 
But if such ' remarkably silly, simple, blundering mar plans, as you 
sa) we are, could execute this plan, so that not a single part of it failed, 
does it not at least show that tiie plan itself must be laid with sotne ' wis- 
dom and propriety ?' — Is there no merit in the ardour with which all de- 
grees and ranks of people quitted their jjiivate afiairs, and ranged 
themselves under the banners of their king, for the honour, safety, and 
advantage of their country ? Is there no merit in the profoiuul secrecy 
guarded by a whole people, so thai the enemy had not the least intelli- 
gence of the dt'siiin, till they saw the fleet of transports cover the sea 
before their port ? — Is there none in the indefatigable labour the troops 
went tiirough during the sie^e, performing the duty both of men and 
horses; the hardships they patiently suffered for want of tents and 
otiier necessaries ; the rradiness with which they learnt to move, direct, 
and manage cannon, raise batterie.s, and form approaclies ; the bravery 
with which they suslainfd sallies; and final!), in their consenting to 
stay and garrison the place after it was taken, absent from their busi- 
ness and families, till troops coidd be brought from England for that 
purpose, though they undertook the service on a promise of being dis- 



NOTES. 451 

cliarged as soon as it was over, were unprovided for so long an ab- PART I. 

seiice, and actually suffered ten times move loss by mortal sickness v^*'-v-^h> 

through want of necessaries, tiian tiiey suftcrcd fi-om the arms of tlie 

enemy ? Tlie nation, however, hud h sense of this uiiderUiking' different 

from the unkind one of this gentleman. At the treaty of peace, the 

possession of Louisbourg was found of great advantage to our aflairs in 

Europe ; and if the brave men that made the acquisi'jon for us were 

TiOi re-warded, at least they were praised. Envy may continue awhile to 

caval and detract, but public virtus will in the end obtain esteem ; and 

honest impartiality in this and future ages, will not fail doing justice to 

merit. 

" Yowv gentleman writer thus decently goes on. * The most substantial 
men of most of the provinces, are children or grandchildren of those 
that came here at the king's expense : that is, thieves, highwaymen, 
and robbers.' Keing probably a military gentleman, this, and therefore 
a person of nice honour, if any one should tell him in the plainest lan- 
guage, that what he iiere says is an absolute f dseiiood, challenges and 
cutting of throats might immediately ensue. I shall, therefore, only re- 
fer him to his own accoimt in this same lettei; of the peopiiug of Xew-Eng- 
land, which he says, with more truth, was by Puruanswho fled thither 
for shelter from the persecutions of Archbishop Laud. Is there not a 
wide difference between removing to a distant country to enjoy the 
exercise of religion, according to a man's conscience, and his being 
trnsported thither b}' a law, as a punishment for his crimes ? This con- 
tradiction we therefore leave the gentleman and himself to settle as well 
as they can between tliem. One would think from his account, that the 
provinces were so many colonies from Newgate. The truth is, not 
only Laud's persecution, but the other public troubles in the following 
reigns, induced many thousand families to leave England, and settle in 
the plantations. During the predominance of the parliament, many 
royalists removed or were banished to Virginia and Barbadoes. who af- 
terwards spread into the other settlements: The Catholics sheltered 
themselves in Maryland. At the restoration, many of the deprived non- 
conformist ministers, with their families, friends, and hearers, went over. 
Towards the end of Charles the Second's reign, and during James the 
Second's, the Dissenters again flocked into America, driven by persecu- 
tion, and dreading the introduction of popery at home. Then the high 
price or reward of labour in the colonies, and want of artisans there, 
drew over many, as well as the occasion of commerce ; an I wlien once 
people begin to migrate, every one has his little sphere of .icqualntance 
and connections, wltich he draws after him, by invitation, motives of in- 
terest, praising iiis new settlement, and other encouragements. The 
• most substantial men' are descendants of those early setilers; new 
comers not having yet had time to raise estates. The practice of send- 
ing convicts thither, is modern ; and the same mdolence of temper and 
habits of idleness that make people poor and tempt them to steal in 
England, continue with them when they are sent to America, and must 
there have the same effects, where all who live well, owe their subsist- 
ence to labour and business ; and where it is a thousand times more diffi- 
cult than here, to acquire wealth without industry. Hence the instances 
of transported thieves advancing their fortunes in the colonies, aie ex- 
tremely rare ; if there reaily is a single instance of it, which I very much 
doubt; but of their being advanced there to the gallows, the instances 
are plenty. Might they not as well have been hanged at home ? — We 
call Britam the mother country; but what good mother besides, would 
introduce thieves and criminals inio the company of her children, to cor- 
rupt and disgrace them .?— And how cruel is it to force, by the high 
hand of power, a particular country of your subjects, who have not de- 
served such usage, to receive yovir outcasts, repealing all the laws they 



32 NOTES. 

'ART I. "^ake to prevent their admission, and then reproach them with the de- 
^0-Y^,^_^ tested mixture ycu have made : ' Their emptying their jails into our set- 
tlements,' says H writer of that country, ' is an insult and contempt, the 
cruellest perhaps that ever one people offered to another ; and would 
not be equalled even by emptying their jakes on our tables.' 

•* The letter I have been considering, Mr. Chronicle, is followed by 
another, in your paper of Tuesday the 17th past, said to he from an officer 
ivhu attended Brigadier-general Forbes, in his march from Philadelphia to 
fort Du Quesne; but written probably by the same gentleman who wrote 
the former, as it seems calculated to raise the character of the officers 
of the certain northern latitude, at the expense of the reputation «'f the 
colonies, and the provincial forces. — According to this letter- writer, if 
the Pennsylvanians granted large supplies, and raised a great body of 
troops for the last campaign, it was not obedience to his majesty's com- 
mands, signified by his minister, Mr. Pitt, zeal for the king's service, or 
even a regard for their own safety ; but it was owing to the * general's 
proper management of the Quakers, and other parties in the province.' 
The withdrawing the Indians from the French interest by negotiating 
a peace, is all ascribed to the general, and not a word said to the honour 
of the poor Quakers, who first set these negotiations on foot, or of 
honest Frederick Post, that completed tiiem with so much ability and 
success. Even the little merit of the Assembly's making a law to regu- 
late carriages, is imputed to the general's ' multitude of letters.' Then 
he tells us, 'innumerable scouting parties had been sent out during a 
long period, both by the general and Col. Bouquet, towards fort Da 
Quesne, to catch a prisoner if possible, for intelligence, but never got 
any.' — How happened that ? — Why, ' it was the provincial troops that 
were constantly emploved in ths't service,' and they, it seems, never do 
any thing they are ordered to do. — Tltut, however, one would think, 
might be easily remedied, by sending regulars with them, who of course 
must command them, and may see tha tht-y do their duty. JVo ; The 
regulars are afraid of being shot by the provincials in a panic. — Then send 
all regulars. — Jit/cf Tliat -was ivhat the colonel resolveil upon. — 'Intelli- 
gence was nov\ wanled, (says the letter-writer) colonel Bouquet, whose 
aticntion to business was [onU] very considerable [th.it is, not quite so 
great as the general's, for he was not of the northern latitude] was deter- 
mined to h\nd NO MORE provincials a scoutini;.' — And how did he exe- 
cut. iiis determination.'' Whv by sending ' Major Grant of the High- 
lantiers, with seven lumdred men, three hundred of them Highlanders, 
THE HEST Americans, Virginians, and Pennsjlvanians!' — No i/wntfer this 
in our writer; but a misfortune ; and he is, nevertheless one of those 
' acute sharp' men who are ^Jlt for learning .'' — And how did this major 
and seven hundred men succeed m catching the prisoner } — ^Why their 
'marcli to fort Du Quesne was so conducted the surprize was complete.' — 
Perhaps you may imagine, gentle reader, that this was a surprize of the 
enemy.— No such matter They knew every step of his motions, and 
had, every man of them, left their fires and huts in the fields, and re- 
tired into the fort. — But the major and his 700 men they were sur- 
prized; first to find no bodv there at night, and next to find themselves 
surniunded and cut to p:eces in the morning; two or three hundred 
being killed, drowned, or taken prisoners, and among the latter the 
major himself Those who escaped were also surprized at their own 
good fortune ; and the whole army was surprized at the major's bad 
management. — Thus the surprize was indeed complete ; — but not the dis- 
grace ; for provincials tvei^t <Aere to lay the blame on. The misfortune 
(we must not call it misconduct) of the major was owing, it seems, to an 
un-named, and perhaps, imknown provincial officer, who, it is said, 
' disobeyed his orders and quitted his post.' Whence a formal conclu- 
sion is drawn, ' that a planter is not to be taken from the plough and 
made an officer in a day.' — Unhappy provincials ! If success attends 



NOTES. 

where you are joined with the regulars, they claim all the honour 
though not a tenth part of your number. If disgrace, it is all yours, 
though you happen to be but a small part of the whole, and have not 
the command; as if regulars were in their nature invincible, wlien not 
mixed with provincials, and provincials of no kind of value without re- 
gulars ! Happy is it for you that you were neither present at Preston 
Pans nor Falkirk, at the faint attempt against liochfort, the route of St. 
Cas, or the hasty retreat from Martinico. Every thing that went wrong, 
or (lid not go right, would have been ascribed to you. Our commanders 
would have been saved the labour of writing long apologies for their 
conduct. It might have been sufficient to say, provincials -were with 
tis / 

A NEW-ENGLANDMAN." 
May 9, 1769. 



(NOTE K. p. 168.) 

With respect to the character of the royal governors. See Franklin's 
piece on the Causes of the American Discontents, Burke's Speech on 
Am. Taxation, and most of the English Histories passim, in which our 
colonial affairs are introduced. The royal governors were, in several 
instances, detected in the grossest peculation, and almost universally 
involved themselves, by their spirit of tyranny, religious bigotry, or 
rapacity, in quarrels with tht- provinces over which they were placed. 
The frequent and sudden prorogation, or dissolution, of the colonial 
assemblies, by which they vainly endeavoured to worry the people into 
submission, was one of the causes of those quarrels. Th.-y transmitted 
to the British ministry, accounts of their provinces, either entirely 
false, or miserably imperfect. " Governments," says Smith, the histo- 
rian of New York, addressing the earl of Halifax, 1756, " have been 
too often bestowed upon men of mean parts, and indigent circumstances. 
The former were incapable of the task, and the latter loo deeply en- 
grossed by 'he sordid views of private interest, either to pursue or 
study our common weal. The worst consequences have resulted from 
this measure, &c. All attempts for conciliating the friendship of the 
Indians, promoting the fur trade, sei uring ihe command of the lakes, 
protecting the frontiers, and extending our possessions far into the in- 
land country, have too often given place 'o party projectsand contracted 
schemes, equally useless and shameful. If the governors of these plan- 
tations had formerly been animated by generous and extensive views, 
the long projected designs of our common enemy might have been 
many years ago supplanted at a trifling expense," 8cc. I should sug- 
gest another source of oppression and disaffection, akin to that of the 
conduct of the governors, which is thus stated by Stokes, a zealou.s 
royalist, in his View of the Constitution of the British Colonies in Ame- 
rica, (1 vol. 8vo. Lond. 1784:) "There was a fatal practice, from the first 
establishment, which greatly weakened the king's cause in all the Ame- 
rican colonies, I mean the bestowing almost every lucr;itive office in 
America, that could be exercised by deputy, on some person residing 
in Great Britain, who employed a deputy, with a slender allowance, to 
execute the office for them : this deputy had neither weight in the pro- 
vince, nor any interest in the government under which lie lived," &c. 

The altercations between Lord Cornbury, as governor of New Jer- 
sey, and the legislature of that state, at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century, ra^y be cited as examples of the treatment to which the colo- 



NOTES. 

nia! assemblies were exposed, as well as of the spirit with which the 
character ami station of the American freemen were maintained. Corn- 
bury attempted encroacliments and oppressions ; the assembly resisted 
and complained. In tlieir first strong remonstrance, they hold this lan- 
guage : " Liberty is too valuable a thing to be easily parted with ; and 
when such mean inducements procure such violent endeavours to tear 
it from us, we must take leave to say, they have neither heads, hearts, 
nor souls, that are not moved with the miseries of their country, and 
are not forward witli their utmost power lavvfidly to redress them. We 
conclude, by advising the governor to consider what it is that princi- 
pally engages the affections of a people, and he will find no other arti- 
fice needful, than to let them be unmolested in the enjoyment of what 
belongs to them of right; and a wise man, that despises not his own 
happiness, will earnestly labour to regain their love." 

The remonstrance, which ended with this passage, was presented in 
form to the governor, by Samuel Jennings, the speaker of the house of 
assembly. Smith, the historian of New-Jersey, gives an amusing ac- 
count of the interview.* 

"Jennings was undaunted, and Lord Cornbury, on his part, exacted 
the utmost decorum ; while, as speaker, he was delivering the remon- 
strance, the latter frequently interrupted him with a stop, ivhafs that? 
&c. at the same time putting on a countenance of authority and stern- 
ness, with intention to confound him. With due submission, yet firm- 
ness, whenever interrupted, he calmly desired leave to read the pas- 
sages over again, and did it with an additional emphasis upon those 
most complaining; so that, on the second reading, they became more 
observable than before ; he at length got through ; when the governor 
told the house to attend him again on Saturday next, at 11 o'clock, to 
receive his answer. After the iiouse was gone, Cornbury, with some 
emotion, told those with \\\m,\h^i Jermiiigs had impudence enough to face 
the D—l" 

The governor produced his answer, after some days ; and, as he as- 
cribed the resistance which he experienced, to the Quakers, he assailed 
them with a grossness of invectice, which that society could hardly 
have expected to hear from any mouth, and much less from that of a 
chief magistrate, bred at the court of St. James. "I am of opinion," 
said his lordship, " that nothing has hindered the vengeance of just 
heaven from falling on this province long ago, but the infinite mercy, 
goodness, long suffering, and forbearance of Almighty God, who has 
been abundantly provoked by the repeated crying sins of a pefverse 
generatiori among us, and more especially by the dangerous and abomi- 
nable doctrines, and the -mcked lives and practices of a number of peo- 
ple ; some of whom, under the pretended name of Christians, have 
dared to deny the very essence and being of the Saviour of the ivorld. 

" We find, by woful experience, that there are many men wlio have 
been permitted to serve on juries here, who have no regard for the 
oaths tiiey take, especially among a sort of people, who, under a pretence 
of conscience, refuse to take an oath ; and yet many of them, under the 
cloak of a veiy solemn affirmation, dare to commit the greatest enor- 
mities, especially if it be to serve a friend, as they call him. 

* See his " History of the Colony of New Jersey, to the year 1721," 
for the entertaining details of the controversy between the governor 
and the assembly. The early history of tiiis state is as edifying as that 
of any other of our confederacy. It yields the most animating lessons 
of energetic freedom and philanthropic liberality, it deserves to be 
more read tlian I presume it to be, and to be better digested that it is 
in the work of Smith. 



NOTES. 'lij; 

" Of all the people in the world, the Quakers ought to be the last to PART I 
complain of the hardsiiips of travelling a few miles, who never repine s,.^-~v'^^. 
at the trouble and charges of travelling several luindred miles to a 
yearly meeting, -where it is evidently known, that nothing- was ever done for 
the good of the country, but, on the contrary, continual contrivances are car- 
ried on for the undermini?ig of the government, both in church and state" 

The courteous governor railed passionately at the assembly itself; 
gave them the lie direct, and signalized the speaker, and another mem- 
ber, as men " known neither to have good morals, nor good principles :" 
" mean and scandalous, seditious, fraudulent, &.c." — The assembly did 
not omit to reply, and to repay liis excellency without stint. It was a 
noble spirit of independence, that, under the circumstancesof the colo- 
ny at that period, dictated such language as the following ; which, 
strong as it is, does not convey an adequate idea of the keenness and 
energy of the whole address. 

" We are apt to believe, upon the credit of your excellency's asser- 
tion, that there may be a number of people in tiiis province, who will 
never live quietly under any government, nor suffer their neighbours 
to enjoy any peace, quiet, nor happiness, if tliey can help it ; such peo- 
ple are pests in all governments ; have ever been so in this ; and we 
know of none who can lay a fairer claim to these characters than many of 
your excellency's favourites." " Our juries here are not so learned or 
rich as, jierhaps, they are in England ; but we doubt not, full as honest." 
'• Notwithstanding those soft, cool, and considerate terms, of malicious, 
scandalous, and frivolous, with which your excellency vouchsafes to 
treat the assembly of this province, they are of opinion, that no judi- 
cious or impartial man will think it reasonable that the inhabitants of 
one province should go into another to have their wills proved." 

♦' It is the general assembly of the province of New Jersey that com- 
plains, and not the Quakers, with whose persons (considered as Qua- 
kers) or meetings, we have nothiiig to do, nor are we concerned in what 
your excellency says against them ; they, perhaps, will think themselves 
obliged to vindicate their meetings from the aspersions which your ex- 
cellency so liberally bestows upon them, and evince, to the world, how 
void of rashness and inconsideration your excellency's expressions are, 
and hoxu becoming it is for the governor of a province to enter the lists of con- 
troversy, with a people who thought themselves entitled to Ms protection of 
them in the enjoyment of their religions liberties ,- those of them who are 
members of this house, have begged leave, in behalf of themselves and 
friends, to tell, the governor, they must answer him in the words of 
Nehemiah to Ranballat, contained in the 8th verse of the 6th chapter of 
Nehemiah, viz. ' T/icre are 710 such things as thou sayest, but thoufeignest 
them out of thine own heart.' 

"These bold accusers of your excellency, the members of this assem- 
bly, are a sort of creatures called honest men,]nsi to the trust reposed in 
them by the country, who will not suffer their liberties and properties 
to be torn from them by any man, how great soever, if they can hinder 
it." 



(NOTE L. p, 187.) 

Lonn George Germain is said to have left the ministry, still persuad- 
ed (after the capture of Cornwallis,) of the practicability of subduing 
America in another campaign. General Lloyd, the great tactician, had 
suggested a plan of operations, by which this might be easily done ! 
The deceptive assurances quoted in the text, from Lord George Ger- 



b NOTES. 

^RT I. main's speech, were rivalled in the speeches of the other members of 
f-Y'^^_' ^^^ government. The following extracts from the debates of the 
House of Lords, of 1778, belong to the same bUnd system of ministerial 
tactics. 

" The Earl of Suffolk said, that it had been strongly relied upon in 
debate, that America would spurn the offers held out in those bills, 
(American conciliatory bills). For his part he was of a very different 
opinion. He had the most undoubted information, that the Americans 
were in the greatest distress, and would therefore embrace any reason- 
able propositions of peace and civil security." 

" Viscount Weymouth said — with regard to what the Duke (of Graf- 
ton) had thrown out respecting a treaty between France and America, 
the most convincing way of reply would be not to argue upon it, but to 
come immediately to the point, for which reason he would fully and 
fairly speak of it ; he did therefore in the plainest and most precise 
manner, assure their lordships, that lie kne\u not of any such treaty liaving 
been signed or entered into between the court of France and the deputies of 
Congress, and he hoped their lordships -woidd not fail to remember, that it ivas 
on the 5th of March (1778,) likewise, that he stood up in this place, and 
declared he knew nothing of any such thing, nor had any authentic in- 
formation of any such treaty being either iti contemplation or exist- 
ence."* 



(NOTE M. p. 191.) 

The charge of co-iuardice against the Americans, was discussed, pro 
and con, with considerable earnestness, in both houses of parliament. 
"With a view to the amusement of the American reader, and the more 
complete development of my subject, 1 propose to insert here a collec- 
tion of loose quotations from the debates of that body, respecting this 
topic of cowardice, and the employment of Indians and European 
foreigners in the British service. 

Lord Chatham said (1777,) " Ministers have been in error; experience 
has proved it ; but what is worse, they continue in it. They told you in 
the beginning that 15,000 men would traverse America without scarcely 
the appearance of interruption ; two campaigns have passed since they 
gave us this assurance ; treble that number has been employed ; and 
one of your armies, which composed two-thirds of the force by which 
America was to be subdued, has been totally destroyed, and is now led 
captive through those provinces you call rebellions. Those men whom 
you call cowards, poltroons, runavvajs and knaves, are become victori- 
ous over your veteran troops; and in the midst of victory, and flush of 
conquest, have set ministers the example of moderation and of magna- 
nimity, worthy imitation. 

" My lords, no time should be lost, which may promise to improve this 
disposition in America; unless, by an obstinacy founded in madness, we 
wish to stifle those embers of affection, which, after all our savage treat- 
ment, do not seem as yet to be entirely extinguished. While, on one 
side, we must lament the unhappy fate of that spirited officer, Mr. Bur- 
goyne, and the gallant troops under his command, who were sacrificed 
to the wanton temerity and ignorance of ministers, we are as strongly 
impelled, on the other, to admire and applaud the generous, magnani- 

* The Treaty of Alliance was signed a month previous — the 6th of 
February, 1788. 



NOTES. 

nious coimuct, the noble friendsliip, brolliei-iy afTection, and Immanity 
of the victors, who, condescending to im|-)Ute the liorrid orders of mas- 
sacre and devastation to their true authors, sujoposed tiiat, as soldiers 
and Eng-hshmen, tliose cruel excesses could not luive originated with 
the general, nor were consonant to the brave and huir.ane spirit of a 
British soldier, if not compelled to it as an act of duty. They traced 
the first cause of those diabolical orders to their source, and by that 
wise and generous interpretation, granted their professed destroyers 
terms of capitulation, vvhicii they could only be entitled to as the makers 
of fair and honourable war." 

"His grace, the Duke of Richmond, turned liis attention (1775) to 
what a noble earl (Sandvvicli,) early in the debate, had said respecting 
the cowardice of the Americans. He begged leave to remind his lord- 
ship, that he did not speak conditionally ; there was no (/'at ihe time the 
charge was made, it was a positive one, and could not now be explained 
away by conditions introduced for the first time ; yet, however positive 
the noble lord might have been then, or guarded he might be now, he 
could inform his lordship that the New England people were brave ; 
that they had proved it; that the general who had commanded at Bun- 
ker's Hill had confessed it ; that another (General Burgoyne), no less 
celebrated for his talents than zeal for the cause, had confirmed it ; that 
an officer, a particular friend of his, on the spot had united in the same 
opinion." 

Col. Barre said — "The Americans have been branded in this house 
with every opprobious epithet that meanness could invent — termed 
cowardly and inhuman. Let us mark the proof. They have obliged as 
brave a general as ever commanded a body of British troops to sur- 
render; such is their cowardice ! And, instead of throwing chains upon 
these troops, they have nobly given them their freedom ; such is their 
inhimnanity ! I only wish, from (his single circumstance, to draw this fair 
conclusion, that, instead of a set of lawless, desperate adventurers, we 
find them, by experience, to be men n't the most exalted sentiments; 
inspired by that genius of liberty which is the noble.st emotion of the 
heart, which it is impossible to conquer, impracticable to dismiss." 

Mr. Burke observed — " The Ameri( ans had been always represented 
as cowards ; this was far from being true ; and he appealed to the con- 
duct of Arnold and Gates towards General Bourgoyne, as a striking- 
proof of their bravery. Our army was totally at their mercy. We had 
employed the savages to butcher them, their wives, their aged parents, 
and their children ; and yet, generous to the last degree, they gave our 
men leave to depart on their parole, never more to bear arms against 
North America. Bravery and cowardice cpuld never inhabit the same 
bosom; generosity, valour, and humanity, are ever inseparable. Poor 
indeed the Americans were, hut in that consists their greatest strength. 
Sixty thousand men had fallen at the feet of their magnanimous, because 
voluntary poverty." 

The Duke of Richmond said (1775)— "The transportation of 20,000 
Russians wonld cost government 500,000/. An equal number of British 
troops should be sent at the same period, or ministery might find, 
that the Russians, instead of conquering America for- England, would 
take possession of it themselves, in virtue of that law of conquest, 
acknowledged by all freebooters. That the Russians would gladly emi- 
grate to America, no person could doubt, who was in the smallest de- 
gree acquainted with the dispositions of ihose people. Shoals of Cos- 
sacks were continually deserting their country, to seek more coiTiforta- 
ble settlements in the north of China. Seventy thousand of these Cos- 
sacs proceeding on such a plan, had lately bidden adieu to the Rus- 
sian empire. It could not, therefore, be imagined, that twenty thou- 
sand Russians would have the least objection to be sent, free of expense, 

Vol. I.— 3 M 



NOTES. 

lo Aiiitiicii ; but there was much reason to suspect, tliat, when there, 
tht-y might tliink the advantages resuking from subiTiittingto the Ame- 
rican congress preferable to those they could derive from defending 
the measures of a British parliament. 

The Eari of Siielburne (1775)—" With respect to t!ie 20,000 Rus- 
sians, his lordship addressed the ministers in the following terms : 
There are powers in Europe who will not suffer such a body of 
Tiusslans to be transported to America. I speak from information. 
The ministers know what I mean. Some power lias already interfered 
to stop the success of the Russian negotiation. As for expecting neu- 
ti'ality fi-om France, that was Idle. 

The Earl of Sandwich said (1775) — " If Russian auxiliaries were ne- 
cessary in the former war, as he was convinced they were, they might 
be so now, they might be so on any future occasion.'' 

The Earl of Chatham said (1777) — " Your ministers have gone to Ger- 
many ; they have sought the alliance and assistance of every pitiful, 
beggarly, insignificant, paltry prince, to cut the throats of their Ifga], 
brave, and .injured brethren in America. 'I'hey have entered into mer- 
cenary treaties with those human butchers, for the piu-chase and sale 
of human blood. But, my lords, this is not all : they have entered into 
other treaties. They have let the savages of America loose upon their 
innocent, unoffending brethren ; loose upon the weak, the aged, and 
defenceless ; on old men, women, and children ; on the very babes 
upon the breast; to he cut, mangled, sacrificed, broiled, roasted : nay, 
to be literally cat. These, my lord, are the allies Great Britain now 
luis ; carnage, desolation, and destruction, wherever her arms are car- 
ried, is her newly adopted mode of making war. Our ministers have 
made alliances at the German shambles ; and with the barbarians of 
America, with the merciless torturers of their species ; where they will 
next apply, I cannot tell. Was it by setting loose the savages of Ame- 
rica, to imbrue their hands in the blood of our enemies, that the duties 
of the soldier, the citizen, and the man, came to be united .■" Is this ho- 
nourable warfare, my lords .'' Does it correspond with the language of 
the poet ? — ' The pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war, that 
make ambition virtue.' " 

The Duke of Richmond said (Nov. 18, 1777) — " But, my lords, I wish 
you to turn jour eyes to another part of this business. I mean the 
dreadful inhumanity with which this war is carried on ; shocking, be- 
yond description, to every feeling of a Christian, or of a man. When 
we have heard of the cruelties of other civil wars, we used to rejoice, 
not to have the age, or the country we lived in, tiie scene of sucli mi- 
sery ; but, to see England, formerly famous for humanity, coolly 
suffering the worst of barbarities to be exercised on her fellow subjects, 
and appearing untouched b3'the woes she causes, because they are at 
a distance, and slie does not experience any of them herself, must be 
trulv mortifying to any man who is in the smallest degree possessed of 
national pride. If ever any nation shall deserve to draw down on her 
the Divine vengeance of hvr sins, it will be this, if she suffers such hor- 
rid war to contimie. To me, who think we have been originally in the 
wron^, it ajipears doubly unpardonable ; but even supposing we were 
right, It is certainly we who produce the war ; and I do not think any 
consideration of dominion or empire sufficient to warrant the sacrifices 
vFe make to it. The best rights may be bought loo dear ; nor are all 
means ji;stifiable in attaining them. To arm negro slaves against their' 
masters, to arm savages, wiio we know will ptit their prisoners to death 
in the most cruel tortures, and literally eat them, is not, in my opinion, 
a fair war against fellow subjects. When we are unfortunately obliged 
i.0 war with other nations, mutual esteem so<hi takes jjlace between ihe 
troops,, and reciprocal humanity prevails, which greatly alleviates the 



NOTES, 4oy 

too many miseries of all wars; but, in the present contest, every mean PART I 
artifice has been used, to encourage the soiiliery to act with asperity, v^r-v"^^ 
or alacrity, as it is now the f:ishion to call it. 

"Instead of takinj^ prudent measures to restrain themililaiy witliinthe 
closest bounds of discipline ; instead of making them sensible, thai, as 
they were to act against their countrymen, every possible means of saving 
their lives, and sparing their jiroperty, should be used, and every de- 
gree of compassion sliovvn to men who only erred from mistaken notions, 
and were still to he considered as subjects of the same king — tliey have 
been encouraged, by authoi'ity, to look upon tlieir opponents as cow- 
ards, traitors, rebels, and every tiling that is vile ; an<l their property 
has been, by law, declared lawful plunder. Tiie natural eHects have 
followed. A military tluis let loose, or rather thus set on, have given 
vent to thill barbarity which degrades human nature, and a total want 
of discipline and good order is said to jjrevail." 

The Earl of Sufi'olk said (Nov. 18, 1777) — The noble earl, the Kiri 
of Chatham, witli all thai force of oratory for which he is so conspicu- 
ous, has cliarged administration as if guilty of the most heinous crime, 
in employing Indians in G^^nerai Burgoyne's army ; for my part, whe- 
tlier foreigners or Indians, which the noble lord h-is described by the 
appellation of savages, I shall ever think it justifiuble to exert every 
means in our power to repel the altem])ts of our rebellious subjects. 
The congress endeavoured to bring the Indians over to tlieir side ; and 
if we had not employed them, they would most certainly have acted 
against iis; and I do freely confess, I think it was both a wise :uid ne- 
cessary measure, as I am chariy of ojjinion, ihat we are fully justifitd in 
iLsin^ every means which God and nature has put into our hands- I think 
it was a very wise and necessary step, on many accounts; nor can I 
ever be persuaded, whoever was the ad\iser, but his conduct will 
stand the full test of public enquiry." 

Lord Lyttleton said, (Dec. 5, 1777) "he was muclj astonislicd at 
the great parade the noble earl had made respecting the tomahawk and 
scalping knife: was an Indian's knife a more dreadful v>'eapon than an 
Englishman's bayonet.'' In the present war, the chief of the blood that 
had been shed, was slied by the point of the bayonet ; )et, who talked 
of the bayonet as a savage instrument of war .'" 

The Earl of Dunmore declared, (Dec. 5, 1777) that the " Virgini- 
ans finding themselves disappointed in obtaining the aid of the Indians, 
had dressed up same of their own people like the Indians, with a z'ieiu to 
terrify the forces under him ; and his lordship declared, he heartily wish- 
ed more Indians were employed; that they were by no means a cmel 
people; that they never exercised the scalping knife, or were guilty of 
a barbarity, but by way of striking terror into their enemies, and by 
that means /JM^/np- an end to the further effusion of blood." 

" Mr. Burke said (1778) — "The savages were now only formidable 
from their cruelty ; and to employ them was merely to be cruel our- 
selves in their persons : and thus, without even the lure of any essen- 
tial service, to become chargeable with all the odious and impotent 
barbarities which they would inevitably commit, whenever they were 
called into action. 

" No proof whatever had been given of the Americans having at. 
tempted an offensive alliance with any one tribe of savage Indians. 
Whereas the imperfect papers already before the house demonstrated, 
that the king's ministers had negotiated and obtained such alliances 
from one end of the continent of America to the other. That the 
Americans had actually made a treaty on the footing of neutrality with 
the famous Five Nations, which the ministers had bribed them to vio- 
late, and to act offensively against the colonies. That no attempt had 
been made in a single instance on the part of the king's ministers, to 



U iNOTES. 

VRT I. procure a neutrality ; and, that if the fact had been, ftvhat he denied it 
»-«v— ^^ to be, J that the Americans had actually employed those savages, yet the dif- 
ference of employing them against armed and trained soldiers, embodied and 
encamped, and employing tliem against the unarmed and defenceless men, 
women and children, in the cowitry, ividely dispersed in their habitations, 
■was manifest ; and left those who attempted so inhuman and unequal a re- 
taliation, rvithont a possibility of excxtse." 



(NOTE N. p. 211.) 

WnoEVEK has read the dissertation of Talleyrand upon the advan- 
tage of forming colonial establishments for \.\\v French, after their late 
revolution, will be at once aware of the acknowledgments which Eng- 
land owes to tlie first emigrants, who prepared this continent for the 
reception of that portion of her population, whom she could not retain 
with safety, or who could not exist with comfort or freedom, at home. 
The enlightened author of the European settlements in America readily 
discerned and recognized the benefit. " In the various changes which 
our religion and government have undergone, which have in their turns 
rendeied every sort of party or religion obnoxious to the reigning 
powers, this American asjdum, open in the hottest times of our persecu- 
tions, has proved of infinite service, not only to the present peace of 
England, but to the prosperity of its commerce, and the establishment 
of its power." 

Dr Davenanthad taken a similar view of the subject in his Tract on 
the Plantation Trade. 

" Such as found themselves disturbed and uneasy at home, if they 
could have found no other retreat, must have gone to the Hans towns, 
Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, or Holland, (as many did before 
the plantations flourished, to our great detriment,) and they who had 
thus retired to the European countries, must have been for ever lost 
to England. 

" But Providence, which contrives better for us than we can do for 
ourselves, has offered in the new world, a place of refuge for these, 
peradventure, mistaken and misled people, where, (as shall be shown 
by and by,) their labour and industry is more useful to their mother 
kingdom, than if they had continued among us. 

" And as to malcontents in the state, perhaps it is for the public safety, 
that there should always be such an outlet or issue for the ill humours, 
which, from time to time are engendered in the body politic.'* 



(NOTE O. p. 219.) 

At the instigation of Franklin, a society was instituted in Philadel- 
])hia, in the year 1743, which took the name of The .^erican Philoso- 
pMcal Society. It pursued, modestly and privHtel}', for the improvement 
of the members, of whom Franklin and Kittenhouse were the most 
active and distinguised, enquires into most branches of physical sci- 
ence. In 1766, another society was formed in the same city, with the 
title of The American Society for promoting and propagating vseful 
knowledge. It m:s composed of unpretending men of all professions, 
anxious to increase the stock of tlieir own information, and to be in- 



NOTES. 

stru menial in enlarging that of their country. Tlie test which tlicy 
established, does them tiie highest honour, Tor the liberality and purity 
of the principles of v/hich it exacted the acknowledgment. They 
confined themselves to the discussion of practical questions, and the 
investigation of matters of immediate utility. The perusal of their 
Minutes must inspire every unprejudiced person with a high idea of 
their intelligence and zeal; I might say, with admiration, when the 
range of their study and research, is considered in connection with the 
attention and drudgery, required by the active professions in which 
they were universally engaged. Points of social economy and general 
pohtics were often discussed at their sittings, and determined upon 
the broadest principles of reason and humanity. Tlie following ques- 
tion, for example, was taken up by them on the 3d September, 1762, 
" Is it good policy to admit the importation of negroes into America .'"' 
Their views of the subject were in conformity with the true theory of 
national welfare and moral obligation. 

They could show, in the hst of their foreign correspondents, who did 
justice to their enhghtened character and benevolent aims, British phi- 
lanthropists and statesmen of the first rank. I may name Sir George 
Saville,"as one of the several distinguished whigs with whom they cai'- 
ried on a commerce of enquiry and speculation, creditable to the sense, 
patriotism, and catholic spirit of both parties. 

The two Philadelphia associations were amalgamated jby common 
consent in 1769: and, in 1780, incorporated, as the American Philoso- 
phical Society, by an act of the Pennsylvania Legislature. 

1 have admitted by implication in the text, to give greater force to tlie 
charge of illiberality against the Reviewers, that the Transactions of the 
present institute are not of much intrinsic worth. They deserve, how- 
ever, a higher character ; and have never been decried any where but 
in Great Britain. The astronomical papers of the first volume drew 
lofty compliments and eager enquiries, from several of the most cele- 
brated savans of Europe. Dr. Maskelyne bore, in letters preserved in 
the records of the society, the strongest testimony to the genius of 
Rittenhouse, and to the merit of his Observations on the Transit of 
Ventis, which were republished in the Transactions of the Royul So- 
ciety. I happen to have now under my eyes, a communication to the 
American Society, from Zach, Director of the Observatory of Saxe 
Gotha, and an eminent astronomer; in which compliments are paid to 
its labours, indicating a sense of their value, somewhat different from 
that of the Edinburgh Review. A short extract from Dr. Zach's com- 
munication may not be unacceptable here. 

" Last year I received the 3d. vol. of the Transactions of the A. P. 
Soc, which I perused with great satisfaction. The observation of the 
annular eclipse of the sun, April 3, 1791, made at Philadelphia, by Dr. 
Rittenhouse, has given me great pleasure, and was of very great use 
in ascertaining the true diameters of the ©and the Moon; and also 
of the injiexion and iiTadiafioii of lig'ht : several astronomers of Europe 
have inferred by it very eatisfactory results; so has the celebrated 
French astronomer, M. de la Lande found, that the observed duration of 
the ring 4' 17" agrees perfectly well, with his diameter O (L > assumed 
in his Astronomical Tables, (iii. edit 1792.) 

The American Philosophical Society has always been more studious 
of doing good within itself, than ambitious of publishing vohimes for 
the approbation of the world. A much more favourable idea of its indus- 
tr)', learning, and usefulness, is conveyed by the private records of its 
proceedings, thun by the si.x quartos of its Transactions, reputable as 
these are, and must be confessed to be, when impartially considered. 
It was early marked by public spirited designs. Witness the appoint.. 
ment in 1763, of committees of its members to make, in dificrent 



NOTES. 

. places, observations on that rare phenomefion, the transit of Venus 
^ over the Sun's Disk. The expense of this undertaking it defrayed, 
though possessed, as at present, of no other regular funds than those aris- 
ing from an annual contribution of two dollars from each of its resident 
members. It has given a particular and steady attention to the re- 
sources open to us in the three kingdoms of nature, and to plans of 
improvement in our physical economy. Its functions were suspended 
necessarily during the revolution, as :dl of its members were more or 
less ardent in the cause of independence, and fitted to act a servicea- 
ble part in the struggle. There has not been displayed since, the de- 
gree of vivacity and earnestness in its proper career, which could have 
been wished ; but, as much, perhaps, as was reasonably to be expected 
under the circumstances of the country, and in the absence of all 
pecuniary patronage. The hopes to be entertained of it now, are 
considerable, from the numbers, particularly among the rising genera- 
tion, who have imbibed a relish for scientific studies, and from the 
greater importance which it is likely to acquire in the public estima- 
tion, as education and knowledge spread and ripen over the land. Its 
library consists of about four thousand volumes, comprising the best ele- 
mentary treatises in science and the technical arts. It has exclianged 
Transactions with most of the academies of Europe, and has been en- 
riched with many valuable works, bestowed spontaneously and with ex- 
pressions of lively esteem, by their authors, such as the BufTons, the La- 
voisiers, the Hunters,* whose vision was either less distinguishing, or 
less clouded, (I leave the world to decide which,) than that of the 
British reviewers. Its Museum of Natural History, though not exten- 
sive, contains a number of rare specimens, chieHy in mineralogy. Its 
'■^meeting house," to use the language of the Edinburgh Review, 
where, according to this liberal and courteous journal, its "transactions 
Are scraped together ," is a commodious and handsome edifice, and the 
room in which it assembles, is, certainly, styled " Philosophical Hall." 
The remark of the Review, that this denomination is in the genuine 
dialect of tradesmen, bespeaks as much of effrontery as ill nature : 
since the Reviewers must have known, that the place of assembling of 
most of the learned societies and professions of Great Britain bears the 
same title of Hall ; and that a term exactly correspondent is tised re- 
spectively by almost every one of the Academies of Europe : Salle de 
I'Institut, &c. 

The imagination of these critics might be supposed to be affect- 
ed with regard to " tradesmen." It will be recollected, that in their 
first review of Franklin's Works, they complained of his indulging, in 
his Memoirs, in too many details and anecdotes concerning that class of 
persons — "obscure individuals." In Zenophon's Memorabilia, we read 
the following as part of one of the dialogues : " Critias, interrupting 
Socrates, said — ' And I, Socrates, 1 can inform thee of something more 
thou hast to refrain from ; keep henceforth at a proper distance from 
the carpenters, smiths, and shoemakers, and let us have no more of your 
examples from them.' ' Must [ likewise give up the consequences,' said 
Socrates, 'deducible from these examples, and concern myself no longer 
with justice and piety, and the rules of right and wrong.' Thou must, 
by Jupiter, replied Charicles," &c. 



* I might add the names of Ingenhauz, Haiiy, Humboldt, De la 
Lande, Cuvier, Ebeling, Adelung, Maseres, Biot, Delambre, Campo 
planes, &c. 



NOTES. 

(NOTE P. p. 225.) 

' ", A just account of the character of General Marshall and of his 
work, is given in the letters of Inchiquin, (letter 8.) The following 
parts of it I could wish to be read in connexion with my tfext. 

"During the war of the revolution, the present cliief justice accom* 
panied the American forces in the capacity of deputy judge advocate, 
which situation afforded him the best means of becoming practically 
conversant with the details of that contest, its difficulties and resources ; 
the character and views of those on whom it mainly devolved ; and the 
construction, movements, and engagements of the armies. In process of 
time he attained to situations of more importance, and successively 
filled several of the first offices. Possessed with tliese advantages, en- 
dowed with a masculine, versatile, and discriminating genius, and hold- 
ing a place, calculated to give weight to whatever he should publish, 
he was selected to compile from the manuscripts of Washington, and 
from the public records and papers, the joint annals of Washington and 
his country. 

"The objects of the work were to furnish a correct and honourable 
memorial of national events, and to immortalize Washington. His 
biography is therefore prefaced with a full account of the discovery 
and advancement of North America, down to the period when he ap- 
pears upon the scene. After which period, till his death, it is natu- 
rally interwoven with the transactions of the revolution, which his 
achievements so largely contributed to effect, and with the formation of 
the government, at the head of which he was placed. 

" The public documents of wiiich the chief justice had the disposi- 
tion, would be inestimable, even if arranged by inferior hands, without 
any attempt at shaping them into a connected narrative. But wrought 
as they have been by him, into a clear, manly, systematic, and philosophi- 
cal history, without a grain of merit on the score of composition, they 
would outweigh the most beautiful composition that ever was formed. 
There is not another national history extant, which is composed entirely 
of authentic, public materials, by a cotemporary and a participator. 

" Nor is the composition so unworthy of the subject. The commen- 
taries and reflections are simple, natural and just. The style plain, 
nervous, unaffected ; perhaps too bare of ornament, and sometimes 
liable to the imputation of verbosity, but never rough, irksome, or in- 
elegant. 

" As great expectations were entertained of this performance, con- 
siderable disappointment has been expressed at some of its alleged de- 
fects ; particularly by those who, vitiated by the malevolent system of 
criticism that prevails in England and this country, are never satisfied 
with nature and plain sense, but incessantly crave the amazing and ro- 
mantic. In every department of letters, standards are erected, to 
which fresh publications are referred for their estimate. But is it fair 
to condemn an American historian to oblivion, because he is less enter- 
taining than Hume or Gibbon, or an epic poet, because he falls short of 
Milton ? 

"The American historian had neither anomalies nor miracles to deal 
with. The recent discovery of a new world ; the still more recent 
struggles of an infant people to shake offtlie trammels of colonization : 
late events, of little except moral interest ; partial, procrastinated, and 
seldom signalized warfare ; the adjustment of treaties and formation of 
republican institutions; though highly interesting to modern contem- 
plation, are much less malleable, than remote and doubtful traditions . 
of astonishing transactions, into the magazine of entertainment, which" 
seems to be looked for in modern history. But whatever the present 
age may desire, facts soon become vastly more important than disserta 



NOTES. 

tlons ; nor can moi'Sl results ever be fairly taken, unless readers may 
im Illicitly rely on the truth of the details. 

" The narrative of the Life of Washington might, perhaps, have been 
enlivened with more biographical and characteristic sketches. But it 
must be remembered, thiitto draw living characters is an arduous and 
invidious task. And when the whole subject matter is well considered, 
the author will be found well entitled to our approbation for the cau- 
tion he has exercised in this particular. As to Washington himself, the 
uniformity of his life, and taciturnity of his nature, precluded any suf- 
ficient funds for this minor scene : though I cannot refrain from observ- 
ing, that his unaffected and warm piety, hisbelief in the Christian reli- 
gion, and exemplary discharge of all its public and private duties, might 
have been enlarged upon with more emphasis and advantage. 

" At such a period as the present, when the press is converted 
into a powerful engine of falsehood, proscription and confusion ; when 
letters are perverted to tRe most treacherous and unwoilhy pur- 
poses, it behoves every American, who admires the history of his 
country, it behoves, indeed, every man who loves truth, to uphold 
an authentic national work, like Marshall's, against its malign enemies 
and lukewarm friends, and to cherish it as a performance whose Sub- 
ject and authenticity alone, independent of any other merits, should 
preserve and magnify it for ever." 



(NOTE Q. p. 228) 

It is curious to find a journal published in Scotland, complaining ot 
the Americans as a " scattered, minatory, and spectUating people," and 
attributing to them as such, a system of manners and morality below the 
European standard. M. Brougham lately asked in Parliament a ques- 
tion which we may repeat — in what part of the world is it in which 
Scotchmen are not to be found in numbers ? and, we may add, in which 
they do not appear as adventurers and speculators ? We do not, how- 
ever, tax them, on this account, with having " great and peculiar faults," 
but on the contrary, we respect in them that spirit of enterprise, and 
pride of independence, which prompt them to incur all the hazards and 
hardships of distant emigration, rather than groan in poverty, and 
crouch under hereditary superiors, at home. I think it would be diffi- 
cult to show the process by which the sense o//i9?ioMr improves, as "the 
spirit of adventure is deprived of its object, and as population thickens 
and becomes crowded." It is in this state of tilings that poverty and ser- 
vility are engen(,lered ; that crimes multiply from the impulses of des- 
peration ; that turpitude snd brutality are kept in countenance by the 
multitude of examples. The operation of hope upon the mind ; the very 
career itself of seeking and compassing a more comfortable, independ- 
ent condition, are favourable to the manners and morals. The sense of 
honour improves with the sense of personal importance, which grows 
out of self-reliance, and equality of rank. 

Tlic second number of " The Old Bachelor," a work, which, in gene- 
ral, is creditable to our literature, contains a keen retort for the para- 
graphs of tlie Edinburgh llcview, to which this note reft^rs. " They 
exhibit," says the Virginian essayist, " a palpable and ludicrous struggle 
between the object and the conscience of the critic ; between the con- 
flicting purposes of lasliing Mr. Ashe, for lampooning the Americans, 
and id the same time of inflicting the lash on them himself." See No. 
2, 1st volume of Old Bachelor, for a full exposition of the absurdity of 
those paragraphs. 



NOTES. 



(XOTE R. p. 251.) 

The whole concentrated reproach of this and the succeeding page of 
the text is capal)le of beini^- fully rt- filled ; and svill be so, I trust, by the 
simple atnuinciation of facts, in my intended exposition of the actual 
state of this count r}'. It may be also retorted, and this is the proper 
mode of dealing with it at present. AVe shall convict the English writer 
of the most hardy dising^enuousness, in describing, as peculiar to the 
United Slates, dispositions and practices which notoriously prevail 
uround him, in England, to an unparalleled extent; which had their 
origin there ; and are almost daily aggravated in amount and malignity. 

The determination on the part of the Reviewer to calumniate the 
Americans, is immediately betrayed by the preposterous and arbitrary 
refinement of distinguishing between their feelings in getting drunk an.d 
that oi" the European. The pleasure of the one is sensual and brutal, 
while that of the other is liberal minded and somewhat sentimental! 
And hence it is, according to, the critic, that the Americans decide their 
<|uarrels in ways which, we are given to understand, are unknown in 
Europe, — rough and tumbling; biting and lacerating. &c. 

1 will not refer to t!ie Parliamentary statements respecting the quan- 
tity of whiskey, licensed and unlicensed, consumed in Ireland ; and the 
prevalence of intoxication in that unhappy country. The vice there is 
not merely "social hilarity betrayed inio excess," but the desperation 
of want and abjection, springing from selfisli mi.sgovernment by the 
ruling kingdom. We will confine ourselves to England, and leave it to 
the common sense of the reader to determine whether she is entitled 
to boast of lier superior sobriety ; and whetlier there is much that is 
sentimental and generous in the proce.ss of intoxication with the topers 
mentioned in tlie extracts which I am about to otl'er. I take the follow- 
ing from the late Reports of the Committee of the House of Commons 
on the Police of the Metropolis. 

" Question put to one of the most respctable witnesses — 

" Do you tliink tliere has been an increased consumption of gin 
within thes^ few years ^ I have no doubt of it, as the increase of beg- 
gars is visible : almost all these persons about the streets drink, and 
they train up their children in drinking. I have seen them at the door 
of the gin-shops, giving their children in arms the draining of a glass. 
There are five large gin siiops, or wine-vaults, as they are called, close 
to the Seven Dials, whicli are constantly frequented. There is one where 
they go in at one door and out at another, to prevent the inconvenience 
of their retiu-ning the same way, where there are so many. A friend of 
mine, who lived opposite, had the curiosity to count how many went in 
in the course of one Sunday morning, before he went to church, and it 
was 320." 

Statement of another respectable witness. 

•'On a Sunday morning, from April <o Michaelmas, on Holborn Hill, 
there is nothing but riot and confusion, from Hatton Garden to ihe 
IMarket, from four o'clock in the morning till eight ; the gin-shops opei> 
so early that they get drunk, and are rioting and fi.^iiting about. 1 should 
think that there must be two or threc^, or four hundred — it is quite like 
a market — loose, disorderly people of both sexes — I have seen as m ich 
as three or four fights on a Suiuiny morning. Thompson's gin-shop is 
what they call tlie best. I should not wonder if there were a thousand 
customers on a Sunday morning, hef<u-e the time of service — the place is 
full from four In the morning till eleven." 

These are simple specimens, which do not, by any means, convey .in 
adequate idea of the enormity iml difFusiv^ness oftheevit. It is to 
Colquhoun's Treatises on the Police of the Metropolis, and on Indigence, 

Vol. I.— 3.N 



PART 



iN'OTES. 

tliat I would refer on lliis Iieud. His statements, m tiiose works, are 
made for 1806 ; and the late Parliamentary reports do not merely con- 
firm them, but show an increase of the vice of tippling, in a ratio far 
greater than that of the population. He bears the foUowin.aj testimony. 
" The quantity of beer, porter, gin, and compounds, sold in public 
houses in the metropolis and its environs, has been estimated, after be- 
stowing considerable pains in forming a calculation, at nearly 3,300,000 
jiounds sterling a year, a sum equal to double the revenue of some at 
the kingdoms and states of Europe." 

" In the year ending July 1st, 1806, the quantity of porter, strong ale, 
andsmallbeer brewed in London by 20 principal, and 126 lesser brewers, 
amounted to 68.228,432 gallons, valued, at the sale price, at 4,440,384/. 
The annual consumption of this beverage must now exceed 12,000,000/. 
and of home-made spirits about 5,000,000/ There are about fifty thou- 
sand licensed ale-houses in England and Wales, furnishing facilities not 
only for intoxication, but every other kind of brutal excess. In the 
■whole of the metropolis and its environs, it is calculated that there is 
about one public house to every thirty-seven families. The prevailing 
habit among the labouring people, in every district in England and 
Wales, is to spend the chief part of their leisure time in ale-houses. In 
vulgar life, it is the first ambition of the youth, when approaching to- 
wards an adult state, to learn to smoke tobacco. When this accom- 
plishment is acquired, he finds himself qualified to waste his time in 
the tap-room. But the evil does not rest here. Numerous families of 
labourerslodge with their wives and children in common ale-houses, 
in the metropolis, and probably in most of the large cities and towns in 
different parts of the kingdom ; while, of late years, the females indis- 
criminately mix with the males, and unblushingly listen to all the lewd, 
and often obscene discourse which circulates freely in these haunts of 
vice and idleness." 

Tiie duties upon the liquor brewed by the eleven principal porter 
breweries of London, amounted, in 1818, to 900,000/. sterling. The ex- 
cise upon malt, beer, and British spirits, throughout Great Britain, to 
nine millions sterling ; to which two millions have been added in the 
late addition to the general taxation. 

Mr. Bennet, in asking leave, at the beginning of the last year (1818,) 
in the House of Commons, to bring in a bill for the better regulation of 
ale-houses, made the following statement. "A large proportion of the 
vice and immorality wliich prevails, may be traced to the bad system 
acted upon at present in licensing and regulating public houses. It 
vvonld be seen by the evidence in the report of the committee on the 
subject, not only that houses of the most nefarious kind were permitted 
to exist, but that they existed with the full countenance and concurrence 
of some of the police officers, who frequented them, and who had a 
fellow feeling with the persons assembled in them. There were above 
itvo hundred houaes of that description in London, in which a nightly and 
promiscuous assemblage took place, not only of men and women, but of 
boys and girls of eight, nine, ten, and eleven years of age. In some of 
them there was established a sort of regular court of justice, at the 
head of which a Jew presided ; before whom was brought all the pil- 
lage and profits of the day and night, and who superintended their re- 
gular distribution. He knew one instance of a boy, not thirteen years 
old, wh'i, ill the course of one night, disposed of property to the amount 
of 10./." 

L> st it should be still supposed that London has a monopoly of the gen- 
try >vhom "social hilarity betrays into excess" of potation, or that the 
race may be extinct, I will quote a passage on the subject from a very 
recent work of unquestionable authority — the "Observations of William 
Tioscoe, Esq. of Liverpool, on Penal Jurisprudeuce." " In taking a sur-- 



NOTES, 467 

vey of society around us," says this eye witness, and zealous patriot, l^-^I'T I- 
"one of the most slriiiing oDJecls whicli attracts our attention, and v.^^v^^-' 
which parlicnhu-ly excites the observation and surprise ot every stranger, 
is the shoclcing liabit of intoxication, which is exhibited, noi only in the 
metropolis, but in most other parts of the kingdom, and wliicli if not actu- 
ally encouraged, is openly pernaitted, to the most alarming and incrediblt; 
extent. Let the reader who doubts this assertion examine tlie reports 
of the committee of the House of Commons, appointed to inquire into 
the police of the metropolis; he will there tind such a representation 
of the dreadful effects of this vice, as cannot fail to call the public atten- 
tion to a subject, in which, not only the interests of morality and reli- 
gion, but tlie personal and individual safety of every member of the 
community is in some degree involved. It is principally to this source 
that the committee have traced up the increased depravity of the pre- 
sent times ; and they have shown, by the most authentic evidence, that 
most of the horrible crimes which have of late been committed, in and 
about the metropohs, have been occasioned by the 'brutalizing effect 
of spirituous liquors ; by which the criminal is rendered insensible to 
the milder feelings of his nature, and regardless of all consequences, 
whether as affecting this world or another.' To the same cause a very 
respectable witness attributes the spirit of insubordination and sedition, 
which has manifested itself in some districts, and the murders to which 
it has given rise." 

As for tiie practice of gambling which the Quarterly Review, with 
monstrous injustice, charges upon " all orders of men, clergy as well as 
laity" in the United States, L will again refer to Colquhoun's book,* for 
a sketch of the sins of the British metropolis on this score. The details 
are such, both in that work and in the Parliamentary liepoi-ts, as 1 do 
not wish to repeat; but no one who has read them, and who knows 
America, will deem me extravagant, when I assert, that the gambling of 
London alone far exceeds that of the whole United States, whether as 
to the variety and odiousness of its forms ; the depravity of spirit with 
whicli it is pursued; the knavery with which it is accomjjanied ; the 
crimes and miseries to which it leads ; or the amount of the sums staked 
within the year. Colquhoun estimated this amount at 7,225,000^. ster- 
ling, besides o,135,00j/. iov fraudulent insurances in the lottery^ M. 
Roscoe, in the work of his which 1 have just quoted, alleges that one 
of the principal causes of the unexampled frequency of crimes in the 
present day, in England, is the open and unrestrained practice of gambling, 
which, originatmg in the higher class.: s, has infected the lower, till it 
has become the habitual occupation even of children of ihe lowest 
ranks, who are seen in the strc ets of the metropolis, on the Sunday 
particidarly, in gaming parties, fifty or sixty in a gang.":|: 

Let us now attend to the pretended eff'ects of the anomalous inebria- 
tion of the Americans : — their rough and tumbling; their biting and /a- 
ceraiing each other, and xhe'w gouging. The last named practice is the 
thrusting out of the antagoiust's eye in a pugilistic comb-U. No in- 
stance of it has ever been known in the states north of Marylmd ; it 
has occurred in some of the sottthern ; but is now rare, and become 
dishonourable even among that class of persons, the vulgarest and most 
licentious, to which it was confined. But, admitting it to be aground 
of national reproach, is it in itself more savage and disgraceful than the 

* 1'. 142, 3d sec. Police of the Metropohs. 

t In his Treatise on Indigence, Colquhoun estimates at 10,000, the 
class of persons whom he calls lottery vagrants, employed in London in' 
prociuing insurances during the lottery drawings. 

t Page 30. 



too NOTES. 

PART I. knobbing. Jibbing, miliing, and all the other modes of injury in fight, for 
^^-..y,,^. which the Erii^lish have invented a technical vocabulary ? Is there any 
thing worse in it, than wliy.l we read in almost all tiie accounts of the 
set and mercenary battles, at which the English of all ranks attend ia 
thousands with the keenness of passion — to wit : that such a one, and 
such a one, "the champion of England," "the cock of the nation," 
after having demolished one of his antagonist's eyes, "made continual 
play ai the other !" Is the spectacle which the gouged combatant may 
be supposed to oifer, indicative of more ferocity in the combat, or more 
shocking lo the memory, or more oflensive to the sight, than that of 
the vanquished party in tiie affair described in the following extract 
from Bell's Weekly Messenger, of Dec. 7, 1818. 

" The great battle between Turner and Randall, at Copthorn, on 
Saturday. 

" 'I'his match for one hundred guineas a side was fought on Saturday 
it the abovi spot, amidst thousands of spectators. 

"Turner from the seventh round exhibited a head like a red night- 
cap, not a slice of flesh, (for it was hit in all directions,) but what was 
covered with blood. There was no knock down till the fourteenth 
round, when Randall, after a hit in every round, to keep the blood in 
motion, floored iiim by a clean right-handed body hit." 

Gouging is abhorred by every man of this country who pretends to 
character: seeking lo witness it as an entertainment is not imaginable in 
the habits or tastes of any such person. But the head like a red night- 
cafi ; the fainting pugilist covered with blood, blinded and mangled, and 
finally, when incapable of all further offence or resistance, deliberately 
laid senseless, perliaps lifeless, with " a clean right-handed body hit" — 
This is the exhibition in which men of rank and fashion in England de- 
light ; over which they preside, and which can draw together twenty 
thousand spectators of all classes, as to a festival not only yielding gra- 
tification, but furnisliing an opportunity for gambling speculations.* 
Horrible as tiiese prize fights are, they are thought worthy of encou- 
ragement as a substitute for the modes in which the English peasantry 
and populace were and are wont "to decidt: their quarrels." In the 
volume for 1806, of Nicholson's Philosophical Magazine, there is a dis- 
sertation written by Dr. Bardsley, of Manchester, " On the Use and 
Abuse of popular Sports and Exercises ;" which discloses to us what, 
doubtless, the Quarterly Review must have considered as a secret, that 
those modes are precisely the rough and tumbling, biting and lacerating, 
which it would represent as peculiar to the Americans. Even the goug- 
ing is included, virtually, if not by name, and very frequently manslaugh- 
ter, a term sufficiently familiar in England. We are outdone by the 
very models of civilization, as will appear by the following statements 
of the Manchester writer. 

"Even in France, and most parts of Germany, the quarrels of the 
people are determined by a brutal appeal to force, directed in any man- 
ner, however perilous, to the annoyance or destruction of the adver- 

* (Boxing.) Bell's Weekly Messenger, May 10th, 1819.) 
"The match between Randall and Mirtin, took place on Tuesday, 
on Crawley Downs, more than thirty miles from London, anrl the spec- 
tators were at least twenty thousand in number ; they fought nineteen 
roimds in about fifty minutes, when Martin resigned the contest. Ran- 
dall was matched 150/. to 100/. betting was seven to four upon him. — 
Spring and Carter next entered the ring. A worse fight has not been 
seen for many years. Spring won it in an hour and three quarters. 
There -was very little money betted on this fight in London Many were of 
opinion that the whole was a trick upon the knowing ones." 



NOTES. 

sary. Slicks, stones, and every dangerous kind of weapon, are resorted 
to for the gratification of passion or revenge. But the most common y 
and savage method of settling quarrels upon the continent, is the adop- 
tion of the Roman pancratium. I'he parties close, and struggle to throw 
eacii other down ; at the same time the teeth and nails are not unem- 
ployed. In short, they tear each other like wild beasts, and never de- 
sist from the conflict till their strength is completely exhausted; and 
thus, regardless of any established laws of honour whicli teach forbear- 
ance to a prostrate foe, their cruelty is only terminated by their inability 
to inflict more mischief." 

" 'I'he mode of fighting in Holland, among the seamen and others, is 
well known by the appellation of snicker-snee. In this contest sharp 
knives are used ; and the parties frequently maim, and sometimes de- 
stroy each other. The government deems it necessary to tolerate this 
savage practice." 

"It is a singular though striking fact, that in those parts of the king- 
dom of England where the generous and manly system of pugilism is least 
practised, and where, for the most part, all personal disputes are decided 
by the exertion of savage strength and ferocity — afondnessfor barbarous 
and bloody sports is found to prevail. In some parts of Lancashire, 
bull-baiting and man-slaying are common pi'actices. The knowledge of 
pugilism as an art is, in these places, neither understood nor practised. 
There is no established rule of honour to save the weak from the strong, 
but every man's life is at the mercy of his successful antagonist. Th'e 
object of each combatant in these disgraceful contests, is, to throw each 
other prostrate on the ground, and then with hands and feet, teeth and 
nails, to inflict, at random, every possible degree of injury and torment. 
This is not an exaggerated statement of the barbarism still prevailing in 
many parts of this kingdom. The country assizes for Lancashire afford 
too many convincing proofs'of the increasing mischiefs arising from these 
and other disgraceful combats." 

" A disgusting instance of this ferocious mode of deciding quarrels, 
was not long since brought forward at Manchester sessions. It ap- 
peared in evidence, that two persons, upon some trifling dispute, at a 
public house, agreed to lock themselves up in a room with the landlord, 
and ' fight it out' according to the Bolton method. This contest lasted 
a long time, and was only terminated by the loss of the greatest part of 
the nose and a part of the ear, belonging to one of the parties, which 
were actually bitteji off by the other, during the fight. The suff*erer 
exhibited at the trial part of the ear so torn ofl'; and upon being asked 
by the counsel what had become of that part of his nose which was 
missing — he replied with perfect naivete — ' that he believed his anto- 
gonist had swallowed it !' It has happened to the writer of these re- 
marks to witness, in more than one instance, the pickint; uj) in the 
streets, lacerated portions of ears and fingers, after these detestable 
and savage broils " 

" The judges, on the occasions above mentioned, have freqaenlly de- 
clared in the most solemn and' impressive charges to the grand jury, 
that the number of persons indicted for murder, or manslaughter, in 
const quence of the bestial mode of fighting practised in this country, 
far exceeded liiat of the whole northern circuit ; and that, in future, 
they were determined to punisii with the utmost rigour of Uie law, 
offenders of this descri.ption — liut, alas ! these just denunciations have 
little av^iilf d — at one assize, no less than nine persons were convicted 
of manslaughter, originating from these disgraceful encounters." 

The reader would f.iin biMieve, I presume, that these "diabolical 
practices," recited from Barrlsley, have ceased; but 1 cannot give him 
this consohition, or in any wav disguise the truth, as lotig as the principal 
London Journals present paragraphs like the following : 



JNOTES. 

Courier, Jan. 18th, 1819, ' 

" MIDDLESEX SESSIONS. 

" D. Donovan was found guilty of biting off the nose of M. Donovan, 
in a fight which they had. J.J. Wakeman was sentenced to six months 
imprisonment, having been found guiUy of seizing R. Cotton by the 
throat, and forcing out his tongue, half of which he bit off, and the 
next day bragged of having eaten." 

Bell's Weekly Messenger, May 31, 1819. 

"EPSOM RACES, Friday— Third day, May, 28, 1819. 

" Several races of minor importance took place this day, and afforded 
considerable amusement and interest to the sporting gentry. When the 
races were concluded, the\ endeavoured to amuse themselves by a view 
oi & ruffianly sort of Jight heUv&cn Oliver, Siwd a black by the name of 
Kenrich, in which the former obtained the victory." 

Sporting Magazine, April, 1819. 

*• A pugilistic combat for 100 guineas a side, and 10 guineas, took 
place on Forest Heath, a few miles from Stony Stratford, on Wednes- 
day, April 7th, between George Uunkeley, a giant of 17 stone, and 6 
feet 4 inches in height, ana Harry Foreman, a miner from O.xfordshire, 
of nearly equal weight. Many thousand spectators were ])resent. They 
fought nine rounds in the most slaughtering and ferocious manner, and 
in the latter Dunkeley broke his adversary's left jaw, and was declared 
the victor. Dunkeley was so much injured by body hits, that he was 
carried off the ground in a dangerous state." 

Sporting Magazine, May, 1819. 

" PUGILISM. 

" Battle between Carter and Spring, on Crawley Downs, 30 miles from 
London, on Tuesday, May 4. 

"It is supposed if the carriages had all been placed in a line, they 
v,ould have reached from London to Crawley. The amateurs were of 
the highest distinction ; and several noblemen and foreigners of rank 
were upon the ground. 

" The signal was given for stripping, and a most extensive ring was 
immediately beat out ; and among the crowd numbers of females were 
to be seen/anxious to get a peep at these famous heroes," &c. 

Sporting Magazine, May, 1819. 
« COCKING— CHESTER. 

" During the races, a main of cocks was fought between the gentle- 
men of Cheshire, (Giliiver, feeder,) and the gentlemen of Lancashire, 
(Partridge, feeder,) for ten guineas a battle, and two hundred guineas 
the main. 

" The great main of cocks, between the gentlemen of Norwich and 
Cambridge, was fought this month, at the Swan Inn, in Norwich, and 
was won by the former — one battle a-head." 

♦' On Monday, May 3, and two following days, the match of cocks 
between the gentlemen of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, took place 
at the cockpit, Holywell, in Oxford, when the former were victors, 
three in the main, and six in the bye battles," &.c. 

" Pugilistic contest, near Barnesley, Yorkshire. — This battle was for 
sixty guineas a side, between John Wike, the champion of the latter 
place, and aw amateur of the name of Green a pupil, of I, the scientific 
George Head, on Wednesday, April 14- This contest excited con- 



NOTES. 

derable interest for miles round Barnesley, and the battle took place at 
the Full-dews, about four miles from Barnesley, in the presence of , 
some thousands of spectators. For one hour and fifty-two minutes the 
heat of battle raged, and during which period 94 rounds were severely 
contested. 

" Wike's head was materially changed, one of his ogles was closed, 
and the other fast verging to darkness. In the 94th and last round, 
Wike was floored from a tremendous hit upon his throat," &c. 

The Sporting Magazine, April, 1819. 
"PUGILISM. 

" Between Purcell and Warkley, for a purse of 50/. given by the 
amateurs of Norwich, on Thursday, April 1. 

" The above contest excited considerable interest among the provin- 
cial fancy, and no less than 10,000 persons assembled on the above spot 
to witness the battle. 

•' ROUNDS. 

" 7. Warkley got Purcell's head under the rope, and made some 
heavy hits with his right hand. Purcell's head appeared truly terrific, 
being one mass of blood. 

"8. Purcell showed a severe cut under the before contused eye, 
which appeared nearly closed, and bled profusely." 

" 17. After retreating to his old corner, he fought most dreadfully, 
and no feature of Purcell's face could be distinguished from the flowing 
of blood," &c. 

I have had occasion to remark, in the second Section of this volume, 
that the legislators of New England prohibited the vulgar sports com- 
mon in the mother country. Bull and bear-baiting, horse-racing, and 
cock-fighting, have never been practiced in our northern States ; in the 
mifldle, they have not, with tite exception of horse-racing, often oc- 
curred ; and it is only in the south that bull and bear-baiting is now 
known ; even there it occurs but very seldom. The baiting of horses, 
of which I have quoted an instance, in the text, from the Memoirs of 
Evelyn, appears to have been a favourite sport in the mother country. 
Struit has recorded it in his amusing volume on " the Diversions anil 
Pastimes of the people of England," and given a plate of the manner 
in which it was performed. Asses were treated with the same inhuma- 
nity. With respect to this useful animal, and the more noble one the 
horse, the Americans are altogether free from the reproach of having 
followed the ignominious example of torturing and destroying them at 
the stake. Nor do our annals afford an instance of the British refine- 
ment of whipping a blinded bear. This popular practice consisted, to 
use the language of Strutt and Bardsley, " in several persons at the 
same time scourging with whips, a blind-folded bear round the ring, 
■whose sufferings and awkward attempts at revenge highly gratified the 
noble as well as ignoble spectators." The duck hunting described by 
Strutt, is equally without example in this country, and so I believe to be 
be the favourite English amusement of thr owing at cocks, of which he 
treats in his third book. But the English traveller, Fearon, has disco- 
vered that the Kentuckians have a pastime called gander-pulling, that 
is, twisting off at full gallop the head of a gnnder tied to a tree. Fea- 
ron does not allege that he saw it himself. There are, certainly, very 
few Kentuckians who have even heard of it. It is, however, eagerly 
seized upon by the Quarterly Reviewers, who, affect to sliudder, and to 
be scandalized infinitely, as if the feelings of an Englishman at home 
were virginal in respect to acts of brutality towards animals. Dr. Bards- 
ley shall inform us specifically whether this be the fact. The following 



'2 



NOTES, 



ART I. passajfes of his Dissertation might have taught the lleviewers a little 
^^^■^^. caution. 

"If the Romans set us the example in devising these sports, (the 
buiting and torturing of animals,) it must be confessed we have ' bet- 
tertd the instiuctions ' For to English refinement and ingenuity, may 
be ascribed tlie noble invention of the gafHe or spur; by the aid of 
which, the gallant combatants of the cockpit mangle, torture, and de- 
stroy each otiier ; no doubt to the great satisfaction and delight of ad- 
miring spectators. Another instance of our barbarous ingenuity must 
not be omitted No other nation but the British has contrived to put 
in practice the battle-royal and the Welsh-main. In the former, the 
spectator may be gratified with the display of numbers of game-cocks 
destroying each other at the same moment, withoutorder or distinction. 
In th( latter, tiiese courageous birds are doomed to destruction in a 
more regular, but not less certain manner. They fight in pairs, (sup- 
pose sixteen in number.) and the two last survivors are tjien matched 
agiiinst eacli other; so that out of thirty -two birds, thirty-one must be 
necessarily slaughtered. 

" Thro-ivhig at cocks, is another specimen of unmeaning brutality, 
confined solely to our own country. After being familiiirized to the 
barbarous destruction of this courageous binl in the cock-pit, it was 
only advancing one step further in the progress of cruelty, to fasten this 
most gallant animal to a stake, in order to murder him piece-meal. 

" Bull-baiting, during the 16th and early part of the 17th century, 
was not confinetl within the limits of a bear garden, but was universally 
practised on various occasions, in all the towns and villages tliroiighout 
the kingdom. In many places, the pr.ictice was sanctioned by law, and 
the bull-rings, affi.xed to large stones driven into the earth, remain to 
this day, as memorials of this legalized species of barbarity. 

" Numbers of bulls were, and still continue to be, regularly trained 
and carried about from village to village, to enter the lists against dogs 
bred for the purpose of the combat. I'o detail all the barbarities com- 
mitted in these encounters would be a disgustmg and tedious task. All 
the iiad passions which s|)ring up in ignorant and depraved minds, are 
here set afloat. 

" At a bull-baiting in StafTordshire, in 1799 ; after the animal had been 
baited by single dogs, he was attacked by numbers, let loose upon hint 
at once. Having escaped from his tormentors, they again fastened him 
to the ring ; and with a view either of gratifying their S3vage revenge, 
or of better securing their victim, they actually cut oflT his hoofs, and 
enjoyed the spectacle of his being worried to death on his bloody and 
mangled stumps." 

"The practice of bull baiting," says the author of Espriella's Letters, 
"is not merely permitted, it is even enjoined by the municipal law in 
some places, .\tttmpts have twice been made in the legislature to 
suppress this barbarous custom : they were baffled and ridiculed ; and 
somi of the most distinguished members were absurd enough, and hard- 
hearted enough to assert, that if siuh sports were abolished, there 
woidd be an end of the national courage. The bear and the badger 
are baited with the same barbarity ; and, if the rabble can get nothing 
else, they will divert themselves by worrying cats to death." 

Tlie bcldiKss of the tr.iveller Fearon, and of the Quarterly Review, 
in attempts ti> degrade the American character, by stories of gander 
]ju1'ingin Kentucky, and bear baiting at New Orleans, must be apparent 
r'rom the quotations 1 have just made; but 1 wish to show further, to 
what they expose the Rritisli nation by authorizing requital. In open- 
ing by accident, the English Monthly Magazine, for Sept. 18o3, 1 fell 
upon the article which 1 am about to transcribe. The character of the 



NOTES. 47; 

author is unknown to me ; but lie is not a foreign witness, and cannot I'AllT 1 
be suspected of a wisli to iHsparujjo his owa country. v^^r-v-^ 

"To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
" SIR, 

" It has been remarked by some author, that the English nation is 
more addicted to cruelty than any otiicr enligiitened people of Europe, 
and though we must naturally be reluctant in achnitting a charge of 
so disgraceful a nature, yet a little attention to what is passing around 
us, particularly in respect to our own iiidifl'erence to the sufferings of 
the brute creation, will, I fear, rather corroborate than refute the asser- 
tion. I shnll confine my remarks to two instances of diabolical cruclt}'. 

" A gentleman of my acquaintance was eye witness to an instance of 
this horrid propensity, near Buxton ; a fellow exhibited a bear which was 
tied to a stake, with a small length of chain allowed ; the bear was not, 
however,' attacked by dogs, as usual, but by monsters in human shape, 
who diverted themselves by trundling a wheel barrow at it — if this ma- 
chine struck the animal, th(.' bear-ward paid 6d. to him who twirled the 
{)arrow, and if it missed, (wliich was oftener the case, as the poor bear, 
from woful experience, had acquired considerable dexterity in avoid- 
ing the blow,) then the bear-ward received 6d, 

"The otiier instance, wi)ich fell wiihin my own observation, seems 
to me to conibine more associations of a kind disgraceful to human 
nature, than any other I remember ever to have heard of. 

" As I passed through a lane, a few days before last Shrove-Tuesday, 
I observed a considerable ci'owd in an adjoining field, enjoying some 
game, in wh.ich a number of boys were busily engaged ; on a nearer ap- 
])roach, I saw ten or twelve boys, with their hands tied, pursuing a 
cock, the wings of which had been previously clipped, to retard its 
escape ; on enquiry, I learnt this poor creatur.; was to be the prize of 
him who could carry it off to a certain part of the field, in his teeth ; this, 
unfortunately for the object of their pursuit, was no easy task, and the 
scene I witnessed in its prosecution was sucli, as surely was never 
equalled in the .annals of brutality. 

" The cock, as in most such sports, had a little start allowed, when 
on a signal, all its pursuers gave chace ; the first who came up with it, 
endeavoured to stun it witli his foot, and if that failed, his next re- 
source was to fall upon it with his body, full length, in which position he 
couirived Xo^fix his teeth in some part, hnt the head w.as usually prefer- 
red, as the animal could not easily retaliate in this situ.alion ! sometimes 
all these bloodhounds were down upon or itear the poor cock at the same 
time, one pulling it by the feet, another by the wings, and a third tugg- 
ing at its head, til! the weakest part gave way, and the strongest teeth 
bore away the prize in triumph ; whilst the poor creature struggled so 
violently,' as at times, by its convulsions, to escape for a moment, the 
7nonster''s jaros ; but if the conqueror proved too strong to prevent this 
momentary escape, his triimiph was of very short duration, for by the 
rules of this game, the unsuccessful followers were permitted to trip 
the heels of the hero who was thus bearing away the prize, which they 
generally contrived to do, and before he could arrive at the goal, he 
was usually overthrown by his pursuers, who, falling upon him and 
each other, with the wretched animal in the midst of them, resumed 
this inhuman struggle. 

"To the disgrace of human nature, most of the less cruel diversions 
■which 1 have mentioned, are conducted by ?nen ,• but in tlieir refine- 
ments upon all former species of cruelly, boys are selected, and en- 
couraged by the men, and taught to make use of their teeth like canni- 
bals." 

(Signed, > " F.GEllTOX SMITH, 

" of Liverpool." 

Vol.. 1.— 3 O 



WOTES. 

VVe may tuppose Mr. Fearon, but not the Quarterly lleviev,', to be ig 
norant of the speech of Lord Erskiiie, on the bill which he introdiiceG 
into the House of Lords in 1809, respecting' cruelty to animals. 'I'lie 
Reviewers ought to have recollected also, the fate of that bill in the. 
House of Commons, where, notwithstanding the disclosure of the most 
horrid barbarities, a quorum could not be kept to secure a decent re- 
jection in the forms. The speech of Lord Erskine to the Peers, fur- 
nishes a kind of evidence which cannot be got over ; for the facts ad- 
duced to demonstrate the necessity of his bill, are vouched upon the 
liighest responsibility. The humane mover said, 

" He could bring the most unexceptionable testimony to their lord- 
ships bar, to prove the existence of such practices as were a disgrace 
to humanity, to a civilized nation ; one barbarous practice was, the cut- 
ting and tearing out the tongue of so noble an animal as the horse."* 

I will confine myself to an extract in addition, from this speech, in 
relation to the treatment of that " noble animal, the horse," which 
treatment, generally, I believe to be more savage in England, than in 
any other country on earth. The following statement of Lord Erskine, 
will illustrate also, what kind of meat it is such of the poor of England 
as aspire to that lu.^ury, usually obtain. 

" A very general practice prevails, of buying up horses still alive, but 
not capable of being further abused by any kind of labour. These 
horses, it appeared, were carried in great numbers to slaugliter houses, 
but not killed at once for their flesli and skins, but left without suste- 
nance, and literally starved to death, that the mat-ket might be gradually 
fed. The poor animals in the mean time, being induced to eat their 
own dung, and frecjuently gnawing one another's manes in the agonies 
of hunger."! 

I cannot refrain from noting here a circumstance connected with the 
treatment of horses in England, which I find stated thus in one of the 
principal newspapers of London. 



* See the number of the English Sporting Magazine, for June, 1819, 
for an atrocious insiinice of this practice. 

•j- Some humane person has returned to this subject, in the Sporting 
Magazine, for April, 1819, and given the following account of the same 
hideous abomination : 

"Let me most earnestly, and with a heart affected by sadness and 
melancholy, and indignant with sensations of shame, call the attention 
of ?nen to the last and dreadfid stage of the life of the laborious horse, 
which has spent the whole of his strength, and wasted his spirits and 
his blood in the most painful, perhaps the most excruciating services. 
lie is, in tlie metropolis more especially, sold in his aged, worn out) and 
unpitied state to a set of brutal, unfeeling — infernal savages 1 as any 
that disgrace and shame the bosom of their mother earth — the nackers, 
or horse butchers; men whose fierce and hardened features, and blood 
stained hands and bodies, are an appalling representation of their horrid 
calling. Their places are dens of famine, animal misery, and torture, 
whicii mi,;ht make humanity weep tears of blood ! Here are seen 
horses worn out with ago and labour, in every possible state of decrepi- 
tude and disease, kept alive as long as possible for the convenience of 
market, lingering under all the horrors of famine, to the degree of de- 
voip'ing each other's manes, from excessive hunger, and at last sinking 
to the earth, one after the other, from emptiness and weakness ! Some 
of them m;iy have been purchased in the country, and driven long jour- 
nies, with barely food enough, and that of the most sordid and worth- 
less kind, to enable them to stand upon their legs." 



NOTES. 47o 

"December 29th, 1818. This day were sAof at the Queeo's stsfcles, part T. 
Jive horses belonging to her late majesty. Tliey had bten in the queen's ^ ^^^^.^^ ^ 
service bet7veeii thirtu and fortii years, txnd were now despatcli*^d (oeintj 
no longer able to do hard-work,) to prevent their fulling to the work of 
dust carts, &c. Sec." • 

Among the ancients (barbarians and pagans!) Ibe beasts that had 
been employed in the building of certain temples, were ever afterwards 
released from druc'_^ery, and delicately fed. They were not " des- 
patched to prevent their failing to the work of dust carts." When 
.Tulius Caesar, in passing the Rubicon, devoted a number of horses to the 
divinity of that river, he set them free to rove in ihe abundant pastures 
in its neighbourhood. — Was there no field at Frogmore, in which the 
five horses wiiich had served her majesty for t/iir/y or forty years, could 
have been permitted to enjoy the remnant of their existence ; if noi as 
a debt of humanity to them, at least as a mark of respect to the memory 
of their mistress ^ The lines of old Ennius furnish a lesson to her ma- 
jesty's executors. 

Sicut fortis equus, spatio qui sxpe supremo 
A'icit (Jlympia, nune senio confectu quiescit. 



■ (NOrE S. p. 258.) 

Dr. Mitchill, of Xew York, has made the following mention of Gt;- 
vernor Col.len, in his Anniversary Discourse of 1813, before the New 
York Historical Society. 

" Cadwallader Golden had a large share in the provincial administra- 
tion of New York. He sent to Sweden, for his correspondent, the dis- 
tinguished professor at Upsul, a collection of the plants growing in Ul- 
stei' county of New York, and accompanied the herbarium with de- 
scriptions. Tlie great author of the scxtiu! system caused the descrip- 
tions to be printed, and in his several publications referred to them as 
authorities. Colden's Catalogue may be seen in the Upsal Transactions 
for 1743. Tiiis performance displays great industry and skill, and justly 
places the auihor among the botanical worthies of North America." 

Linnjeus named'a plant of the tetrandous class, Coldenia, in honour 
of the daughter of Colden. The historian cultivated mathematics with 
distinguis!»ed success, and maintained a correspondence on various 
branches of science with several of the most eminent savans of Europe. 
In the year 1743, he suggested and explained in detail, in a letter to Dr. 
Franklin,* the stereotype method of printing. The process which he 
recommended, is the same as that practised, and said to have been in- 
vented, by Herban at Paris. 



(NOTE T. p. 266.) 

The first steam boat launched in the Hudson was at once crowded 
with passengers, and in no part of the United States where the same 
Tninle of conveyance appeared, did the inhabitants manifest the least 
hesitation aljout making immediate use of it. Not so in Great Britain. 

* See the letter in the 1st vol. of the New York Medical Register. 



KOTES. 

We read in an article on steam boats, in the 45lh vol. of Tillock's Pbl- 
losopiiioal ]Vl:ig;iziiie, the following statement: 

" At first, owing to tlie novelty and apparent danger of the convey- 
ance, when the first steam boat appeared in tl>e Cijcie in 1812, the 
number of passengers was so very small, that the only steam boat on 
the river could hardly clear her expenses ; but the degree of success 
which attended that attempt soon commanded public confidence." 

I take the following additional illustrations of this ::>ibject from a mas- 
terly j-eview of Coldtn's Life of Fulton, published in the Analectic 
Magazine for Sept. 1817". 

" To show how little jiretensions the E^nglish have to this discovery, 
we lay before our readers tlie following extracts from the best and most 
popular of the monthly publications of that country. 

In the London Monthly Magazine for October, I8l3, p. 244, it is 
said, " We have made it our spoci-1 business to lay before the public, all 
the particulars we have been able to collect relative to the invention of 
steam passage boats in America, and their introduction into Great Bri- 
tain ; because we consider this invention as worth to mankind more than 
a hundred battles gained, or towns taken, even if the victors were en- 
gaged in a war, which might have some pretence to be called defensive 
anti necessary. It affords us great satisfaction to be able to lay before 
our readers a correct description of the Clyde steam boat, obligingly 
communicated to us by Messrs. Woods, shi]) builders in Port Glasgow. 
It is but justice, however, to those gentlemen, to state, that they candid- 
)}' consider the steam boats, as they are at present constructed, (that is 
on the Clyde,) to be in a very rude stale, and capable of great improve- 
ment. 

*' The boat runs in calm weather four, or four and a half miles per 
hour ; but against a considerable breeze, not more than three." 

In the Monthly Magazine for November, 1813, vol. 36, p. 385, an 
account is given of the New York steam boats running on an average, 
with or again.st the tide, at the rate " of six miles an hour, with the 
stnooihness of a Dutch Slreckshute." 

In the same page is a wooden cut of the Ciyde boat ; and a note of 
the editors, stating, " that the inhabitants of the populous banks of the 
Thames are not at present acquainted with steam boats, only through 
our descriptions of them." 

In the same Magazine for January 1814, p. 529, is a proposal to 
erect a company for the purpose of building steam boats to navigate 
the Thames. 

In the Magazine for February 1814, p. 29, is a further description of 
the American steam boats, as an interesting article of information. 

In the same Magazine for April 1814, a further account of American 
steam boats is given by Mr. Ralph Dodd, engineer, who had visited 
them in this country. He states that there were then two places in 
Great Britain where steam boats had been employed, to wit, on the 
river Braydon, between Yarmouth and Norwich, and on the river Clyde, 
between Glasgow and Greenock: and at the close of his account, he 
mentions that he had been urging the use of this mode of conveyance 
for two years past, and was happy to find his recommendations realized. 

By the Monthly Magazine for 1814, p. 358, it appears, that the above 
named Ralph Dodd had succeeded in forming a company to build steam 
boats to be used on the Thames ; and in the same page it is stated, that 
the Clyde steam boat had run for eighteen months past : that is, the first 
steam boat began to run in America under Fulton's direction in 1807, 
and tlie first steam boat began to run in Great Britain in or about the 
month of May, in the year 1313, six years after they had been in full 
opera'ion in this country; in all probability, if it had'not been for Ful- 
ton's enterprise andingenuity, Great Britain would not have had a steam 



' NOTES. 47' 

bo^t tor Ihese twenty years to come. He showed Lbem how to succeed. PART I 
Yet is the account in llees'sEncycIopaediuso drawn up, as if the vvliole v^-y-'^ 
of the invention w:is owii\g to Enghsh skill and enterprise. 

" We hear much (s;iy the editors of the Monthly Magazine for April 
1813, vol. 33, p. 243,) of the proven success of the sleani passage boats 
against the rapid streams of the great rivers in America ; yet nothing of 
this kind has yet been adopted in Great Britain. Are we to succumb to 
America in the mechanic arts ?" This was true ; for the Clyde boat had 
not begun to run when that paragraph was v. litten, nor, we believe, till 
at least a month after it was published. 

" The general index to the first twenty volumes of the Edinburgh 
lleview, comprehending the month of October 15512, has not an article 
relating to steam boats. Yet no o.'ie can complain that the editors of 
that work are not sufficiently alive to their national claims." 



(NOTE U. p. 275.) 

In the Discourse of Dr. MitchiM, of New York, to which I have re 
ferredin Note S, there is the fo'!.)vvi(i;v notice ot Jam^s Lot^'an. 

" I have a copy of James Logan's ' Experimenta, et MtU 'emata circa- 
generationcm plantarum.' I'hey were printed at LondoTi, ui Latin and 
English. He relates expL-rimenls made on Indian C(n'n to prove the 
prolific nature of staminal dusl. He quotes Dr Grew, as ascribing to 
Mr. Thomas Millington the origii.al idea, as long .igo as 1676, that plants 
have sexes. It is not a little remaikable, thai this small tract is more 
likely to perpetuate the author's fcime, than all the judicial acts of his 
life." 

1 would observe, on the last phrase of this quotation, that, if the 
learned author of the discourse meant to disparage the judicial acts 
of Logan, he has committed a signal injustice, or spoken without due 
knowledge. Logan's judicial cai-eer was one of great integrity, and 
utility to the state. .Vs Poiuisylvania was divided into parties for 
and against the Proprietary, and as this early friend of Penn took the 
lead on the side of lais family, he became dbnoxious to keen enmities, 
and unsparing detraction. 1 his accounts for the angry proceedings of 
the House of Assembly towards him from time to time, and for the co- 
lours in which he is painted in the Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 
published in London to counteract the Proprietary interest there. I am 
well informed that Franklin, the authorof the Review, acknowledged, at 
a distant period, that Logan had been represented in the work pursuant 
to party feelings and aims, and not in conformitv with his real charac- 
ter and services. The ciiarges which Logan delivered, as chief justice 
of Pennsylvania, to grand jurits, are of siiigidar excellence. He appears 
in them not only as a watchful guardian of the domestic weal, and as rv 
sagacious director, but as a profound moralist, and beautful writer. 
Such subtle disquisition, and lofty speculation, such variety of know- 
ledge, and richness of diction, are seldom found in compositions of any 
kind. Of the ])ractical lessons which he incwlcated, 1 am induced to 
quote the following, from a charge dated April 13, 1736, because it has- 
a curious appositentss to the present times in this country, and contains 
maxims of universal and perpetual validity. 

" As poverty, and the want of money, has of late been the great cry- 
in this place (Philadcl|)hia) ; and riches have been shown to be the na- 
tural eHiccts of sobriety, induslrv, and frugality ; the true causes of this 
poverty may just)}' deserve a more near and strict inquiry : upon which. 



NOTES. 

the case, if I mistake not, will appear as follows. It is certainly with a 
, state, as with a private family ; if the disbursements or expenses are 
gitaler tliaii the iii. ome, that family will undoubtedly become poorer. 
And, in tlie same manner, if our importations are greater than our ex- 
ports, the country in general will sink by it. This has been our case 
for some jears past, owing, in a great measure, not only to the badness 
of tlie commodicy we exjjorled, to tiie great injury of our credit, (which, 
no;'vitlist;uidmg, is now in some degree retrieved, by the diligence of 
orn .fiicei-, aui,l Uie country will undoubtedly reap the advantages of is) 
but cilso to our using more European and other goods than we can pay 
for by our produce, or perhaps really want ; and then the balance must 
be paid (if 'tis e\ er done) in money. 

" These are the open and avowed reasons, that may be given, for our 
scarcity of coin ; but as to our poverty, it may be inquired, whether 
there l>e not yet a cause ? And every man who complains, may ask 
himself, wh-therhe has been as industrious and frugd, in the manage- 
meni of his affairs, as his circumstances required? wiiether credit has 
not hurt iiim, by venturing into debt, before he knew how to pay ? and 
whether the attraovjons of pleasure and ease have not been stronger 
than those of busin'ss ? but Solomon says, He that loveth pleasure, sliall 
be a poor man ; and he that loveth wine and oil, (that is, high living,) 
shall not be rich, Prov. 21, 17. He tells us also, elsewhere, who they 
are that shall come to poverty, and what it is tiiat clothes a man with 
rags, Prov. 23, 21 ; and shows, very clearly, that the ways to get wealth 
were tlie very same, near three thousand years ago, that they are at 
-this day, and probably, they may continue the same to the end of the 
world. 

"If pcopleof substance cannot employ men to build, orby other means 
to improve the country, but at higher rates than the work will be worth 
to them when finisheil, whether 'tis to be let or sold, such workmen 
cannot expect employment, but poverty must come as one that iravel- 
leth, and want as an armed man And if the same love of pleasure, 
wine, and oil, still continue under these circumstances, it will not be 
difficult to find a cause why such are not rich. It is not to be doubted, 
but that young beginners in the world have mistaken their own condi- 
tion ; have valued an appearance, and run too easily into debt; and 
tliat workmen ileclining labour on practicable terms, to put it in the 
pov.'er of others to employ them, and yet continuing their usual expense ; 
it is not to be doubted, I say, but that great numbers, by these mea- 
sures, though they may not be the only cause, have been plunged into 
distressed circumstances, of which tiiey themselves will not see the 
reason : but being uneasy under ihem, they repine, and grow envious 
against those who, by greater diligence and circumspection, have pre- 
served themselves in a more easy and safe condition of life. Such peo- 
ple run into complaints of grievances ; cry out against the oppression 
of the poor, though perhaps no country in the world is more free from 
it than ours ; they grow factious and turbulent in the state ; are for 
trying new politics, and like persons afflicted with distempers, contracted 
through vicious habits, who are calling for lenitives to their pains, but 
will not part with the beloved but destructive cause ; they are for in- 
venting new and extraordinary measures for their relief and ease ; when 
St is certain, that nothing can prove truly effectual to them, but a change 
of their own measures, in the exercise of those wholesome and healing 
virtues I have mentioned, viz. sobriety, industry, and frugality : not by 
contracting new debts, for this is a constant snare, and a pit, in which 
the unwary are caught ; for tlie borroiver, we are told, is a servant to 
the lender, and the man who gives .surety worketh his own destruction : 
for why (ills said) should he (thy creditor) take thy bed from under 
thee .' or, which amounts to the same, why should he take that from thee. 



•NOTES. 4753 

ftom which thou must gain tliy bread, or tlie place on which tliy bed PART I. 
stands? such relief is but a snare : and I will here be bold to sny, that y^^s/"^^ 
it is not even the greatest quantity of coin thai can be imported into 
this province, (unless it were to be dislributed for nothing,) nor of any 
other specie, that can relieve the man wiio has noiliing to purchase it 
with ; but it is his industry, with frugality, that must ease him, and enti- 
tle him to a share of it." 



(NOTE V. p, 396.) 

TuE petition which Lord Nugent presented to the House of Cojii- 
mons, during its last session, (18 19) on the part of the English Roman 
Cathohcs, was signed by lO.oOO persons, among whom were eleven 
peers, thirteen baronets, and three liundred gentlemen of landed pro- 
perty. To make the American reader acquainted with the intent of 
their disfranchiaement, I olfer the following exti-acts from some of tlieir 
late petitions and addresses, as preserved in a valuable work published 
the present year in London, and entitled, " Historical Memoii'S of the 
English Catholics, by Charles Butler, Esq." 

" Several lUsabimg aiid penal laws stilt remain in force ugainst English 
Catholics. Still are civil and mditary offices denied them ; still are they 
axchided from many lines in tlie profession of the law and medicine ; 
still are some avenues to commercial wealth shut against them ; still is 
entrance into corporations prohibited to them ; still the provisions for 
tlieir schools and places of religious worship are without legal security ; 
Still they are disabled from voting at elections ; still ibey are deprived of 
eligibility to a seat in the House of Commons; still Roman Catholic 
peers are excluded from their hereditary seats in ti)e House of Lords ; 
and still Roman Catholic soldiers and sailors are legally subject to heavy 
penalties, and even to capital punishment, for refusing to confirm to the 
religious rights of the established church. Each of these penal laws has 
a painful operation : their united effects is very serious. It meets the 
Catholics in every path of life ; makes their general body a depressed 
and insulated cast ; and forces every individual of it below the rank in 
society which be would otherwise hold. Seldom, indeed, does it hap- 
pen, that a Roman Cathohc closes his life, without having more than 
once experienced, that his pursuits have failed of success, or that, if 
they have succeeded, the success of them has been greatly lessened or 
greatly retarded, or that his children have lost provision or preferment, 
in consequence of his having been a Roman Catholic." 

" How injurious the test acts are, both to the public and to the indi- 
viduals on whom they operate, appeared in 1795 -, in which year, during 
the then great national alarm of invwsion. Lord Petre, the grandfathei' 
of the present lord, having with the express leave and encouragement 
of government, raised, equipped', and trained, at his own expense, a 
corps of two hundred and fifty men for his majesty's service, reqviested 
that his son might be appointed to the command of them. His son'd 
religion was objected, his appointment refused, and another person 
was appointed to the command of the corps. You cannot but feel how 
much such a conduct tended to disco\irage the Catholics from exertions 
of zeal and loyalty : — but, the noble faniily had too much real love of 
their country to resign from her service, even under tiiese circum- 
stances. His lordship delivered over t!ie corps, completely equipped, 
and completely trained, into the hands of government, aixl his soii 
served in the ranks." 

" In the last Parliament, (1816) it was shown, that a meritorious pri- 



NOTES. 

vale, for rci'iisiiig (wliicli lie did in a most respectful manner,) to at- 
^ tend divine Service and sermon, according to the rights of the estab- 
lished church, was confined nine days in a dungeon, on bread and 
water." 

" Thus the Englisli Cntliolic soldiers are incessantly exposed to the 
cruel alternative of either nialiing a sacrifice of their religion, or incur- 
ring the extreme of legal punishment ; than which, your petitioners 
iiumbly conceive, there never has been.^and cannot be a more direct 
Z'eliglous persecution. To an alternative, equally oppressive, the En- 
glisli Roman Catholics are exposed on their marriages; the law re- 
quires, for tiie legal validity of a marriage in England, that it should be 
celebrated in a parish church; as Roman Catholics believe marriage to 
be a sacrament, the English Roman Catholics naturally feel great re- 
j)ugnance to a celebration of their marriages in other churches than 
their own." 

With reg-ird to tiie Irish Roman Catholics, their situation is worse. 
Their cUsfrandusement is as entire in substance, and much more galling 
in its operation, tlian that of the American negroes. In 1812, the num- 
ber of the Irisli Catholics was estimated at 4,200,000 ; making Hve- 
sixlhs of the whole population of Ireland, and being as 10 to 1, in the 
proportion of the Protestants. Their clergy amounted to upwards of 
two thousand. The following representations are copied from a very 
able and full exposition of their grievances published at the period just 
mentioned.* 

If a Catholic clergyman happens thougli inadvertantly, to celebrate 
marriage between two Protestants, or between a Protestant and a Ca- 
tholic, (unless already married by a Protestant minister,) he is liable by 
law to siifler death. 

The Catholic clergy are unprotected by any law, prohibiting the dis- 
turbance of Divine service, whilst celebrated by them. 

The Catholic clergymen, bound by his vows to a life of celibacy, and 
generally in narrow circumstances, feels the harshness of being held 
lialile to the payment of a modern tax, called bachelor's tax. 

The Catholic *it'rgy are interdicted from receiving any endowment, 
or permanent provision, either for their own support, or for that of their 
houses of worship, &c. 

Whilst the members of all other religious persuasions in Ireland are 
permitted to provide for the permanent maintenance of their respective 
ministers of worship, and of the establishment connected with their 
respective tenets, the Catholics alone are denied this permission. Re- 
proaclied, as ihey frequently :.re, with the poverty of their clergy, the 
misery of their peojile, and tlie supposed ignorance of their poor, Ihey 
are forbidden by law, to resort to the necessary measures for supply- 
ing these deficiencies. 

In Ireland, the Protestant parishioners actually enjoy the prlvdege 
of assembling togetiiei-, under the name of Parish Vestries, <o the exclu- 
sion of the Catholics, of legislating and of imposing such yearly lard tax 
upon the Catholics as they may think proper, for '.he alleged jjurposes 
of building, repairing, refitting, &c. Protestant houses of worship — and 
of providing lucrative occu[)ation for each other. 

The people of Irel.md, already pay (as a plain calculation will show,) 
an average sum, not less tlian 200/. for every family, that frequenis the 
public service of the cslahlished church: or in other words, each of 
these families now costs lo the people an average sum of 200/- yearly, 
for its religious worship. 

* Statement of the Penal laws, which aggrieve tUe Catlioiics oMre- 
lahd. 2d Edit. Dublin. 



HOTES. 4iiJ 

Tlie Irish pailiameiit, in the last year of its exislence, solemnly or- PART I. 
jUiizecla powerfhl iiiquisilioii, the Commission of Charitable IJequests, y.^j'-v'-^ 
vigilant and eager in tl»e pursuit of" its jirey, and armeil with every ne- 
cessary KUtiiority for discovering and seizing the funds destined by dy- 
ing Catliolics for thi.- maintenanci; of tiie pious and the poor of their own 
communion, and appropriating tiiem, when seized, to the better mainte- 
nance of the Protestant institutions." 

" Stiffice it to say, respecting the general conduct of this board, that 
their zeal and activity in tlie discharge of their ungracious functions, 
have completely succeeded in fruslratifig every attemjjt of the Irish 
Catiiolics to provide any permanent maintenance for the ministers of 
their worship, their places of education, or otiier pious or chariiable 
foundations." 

"No Catholic can be a guardian to a Protestant ; and no Catholic 
priest can be a guardian at all. Catholics are only allowed to have arms 
under certain restrictions ; and no Catholic can be employed as a fowler, . 
or have for sale, or otherwise, any arms or warlike stort-s. No Catho- 
lic can present to an ecclesiastical living — iilthough dissenters, and 
even Jews, have been found entitled to this privilege. The pecuniaiy 
qualification of Catholic jurors is made higher than that of Protest- 
ants." 

" The number of Catholics qualified for seats in the legislature, (if 
learning, talents, landed estates, or commercial wealth be admitted as 
a qualification) probably exceeds thirty thousand persons. These men 
stand personally proscribed by the existing exclusion, whilst their Pro- 
testant neighbours, find even facility for ready admission." 

" Hence, every Protestant feels himself, and really is, moi-e firm and 
secure in the favour of the laws, more powerful in society, more free 
in his energies, moi-e elevated in life, than his Catholic neighbour of 
equal merit, property, talents, and education. He alone feels and pos- 
sesses the right and the legal capacity to be a legislator, and this con- 
sciousness is actual power." 

" V/hatever may be the wealth of the Catholic, his talent, or his ser- 
vices, he is uniformly refused a place upon grand juries within the cor- 
porate towns ; and even upon petty juries, unless when the duty is 
arduous, and unconnected with party interests. He more than doubts 
of obtaining the same measure of justice, of favour or respect, from 
the mayor, recorder, aldermen, tax gatherer, public boards, &.c. that is 
accorded to his Prote.stant neighbour. He lives in continual apprehen- 
sion, lest he or ids family may become objects of some pecuniary ex- 
tortion, or victims of some malicious accusation. Hence he is cringing, 
dependent, and almost a suppliant, for common justice." 

"Thus, the Catholic leads a life rescmbh ng that of the coiuJemned 
-le-iv; of ?io accoiuit personally ; but partially tolerated for the sake of 
outward sliow ; trampled upon individually ; preserved collect'vely — 
for the uses of others ; permitted to practice commerce andagricuiture 
for the benefit of public revenue ; gleaning, by connivance, a I'ttle 
money from arduous enterprises and intense labours, wliich the happier 
lot of the privileged class enables them to decline ; but Jiever to be 
received cordially as a citizen of the town, which he enriches, and 
perhaps maintains." 

" It will appear, tliat the gross number of offices and situations, from 
which the class of penal laws, concerning coi'porate offices, excludes 
he Catholics, may be considered as amounting — • 

" Directly, and by express enactment, to about - 2548 
" Consequently, to about 1200 

" Total , - - - :^7.ty '■• 

Yor., I.— 3 P 



ART I. "The judicial situalions, controlling the enth'c a(iiiii..,^.w.,o,i o,' 
^-v-^^ justice in Ireland, are at present monopolized by the Protestants ; and- 
under tlie existing hiws and system, tiiey must continue to be occupied 
by Protestants alone." 

" There appears to be a total number of nearly 1500 offices connect 
ed with the profession and administration of the laws, which are inter- 
dicted to the Catholics, either by the express letter, or by the necessary 
ojjeration, of tiie present penal code." 

"One hundred and sixty legal offices, of honour and of emolument, 
are inaccessible to Catholic barristers, and open to Protestants. Thir- 
teen hundred other offices are reserved solely for tlie ruling class, to 
the exclusion of Catholic students, solicitors, attorneys, cleiks, &c. &c." 
"Throughout the entire post office, established in Ireland, for in- 
stance, consisting of several hundred persons, there is scarceiy a single 
Catholic to be found in a higlier situation than that of a common letter- 
carrier; and few of even tins clas^. Tlie like may be affirmed of the 
stamp office, bank of Ireland, and tlie other public boards and establisli- 
ments of Ireland." 

"Altliough not disqualified by an express statute, yet the C.ttholic 
physicians, surgeons, apothecaries — not inferior in learning, skill, expe- 
rience or character, to those of any other persuasion — are practically 
excluded from medical honours anc^ public situalions — and especially 
from medical appointments of emolument or credit, within the influence 
of the crown, or of the numerous departinents connected with the 
state." 

" We do not read the name of any Catholic amongst the physicians, 
stirgeons, druggists, or apothecaries, attached to the military or navai 
departments " 

"Tlie law presumes every Catholic to be faithless, disloyal, ituprinci- 
pled, and disposed to equivocate vpon his oath — until he shall have repelled 
this presumption by his sworn exculpation — in public court." 

" That there exist in Ireland numerous splendid establishments, bear- 
ing the plausible profession of public education, is sufficiently known 
From the extensive scale and pompous exterior of the buildings, from 
the numerous train of officers and heavy annual charge — a stranger 
might infer the existence of ample and liberal public instruction in ire- 
land — but, ujjon a nearer view, he will be quicklj undeceived. 

" These seminaries are closed, by law or by usage, against the Catho- 
lics. They are founded, generally speaking, upot) strict and exclusive 
Pi-oiestantism — upon abhorrence of Popery — and upon the inculcation 
of doctrines, breathing personal imputation and indirect hostility against 
the Catholic poptdation." 

"Protestant funilies will not, in general, take Catholic servants. 
Every newspaper contains advertisements for servants, signifying that 
they must not be Catholics." 

"In yeoman corps, (armed,) with very few exceptions, no Catholics 
are admitted," 

"in the country corps, the bigotry of the cainainsccenerally excludes 
Catholics ; and, even when the captains would wish, for the appearance 
of these corps, to "mix a few stout comely Catholics in it, tlie bigotry of 
the |)rivatcs interferes to prevent it — as, in most instances, they would 
resign, if such a measure were persisted iri." 

*' In many towns in Ireland, there are convivial societies, amongst 
whom it is a rule to exclude Catliolirs." 

" hi many courties, Protestants will not visit a Catholic ; and it is the 
fashion to speak of tii!:'m in the most injurious and degrading terms." 
"The Catholics can feel, ajid do&uiTer." 

" The very p-^.ws'.itry aciitely feel the stigma cast by government upon 
their sect and tiiti?'religion. The lowest order even suffer most. The 



NOTES. ^o 

.ealthy Catholics acquire a degree of consideration and legal security PART I 
rem their properly; hut tlie peasantry are left naked to the pelting of i 
he storm, to all tlie jit)es and johs, of Protestant ascendancy." 

" Not only a Protestant lord looks down upon a Catholic lord, and a 
I'rotestant gentleman on a Catholic gent'enian, but a Protestant peasant 
•n a Catholic peasant ; and, in proportion as the degrading scale de- 
fends, the expression of contempt becomes more marked and gross." 



(NOTE W. p. 397.) 

Mn. Fearon relates a story of negro flagellation, which he pretends 
to have witnessed in Kentucky, and from wiiich it might be inferred, 
that the general treatment of the slaves in that state is barbarous. Tlie 
inference wouk! involve a great injustice ; for, their contiition is emi- 
iiently good in Kentucky, as 1 myself know from personal observation, 
and as every candid traveller who has had the same opportunity of judg- 
■ng, will acknowledge. They have there, an abun<lant provision of ex- 
cellent food ; their labour is light ; and the recreations in wiiich they 
ire indulged, give a i>articuiiir hilarity to their carriage. We have ano- 
her Englisli writer of travels. Lieutenant Hall, wh.o has assigned u 
; liaptev specially to the negro slaver}' of the United States, and j^assed 
geneial sentence, confessing at the same time, that " information as to 
"the condition of the negroes, in jioint of fact, is little attainable by a 
cursory traveller." lie, it would seem, only traversed Virginia, Xorih 
Carolina, and a part of South Carolina, rapidly, in the stage coach, and 
hy the main road. As he passed along, in the nig'it, he saw the '• fire- 
light shining through some of the negro huts," from v.'hich he inferred, 
Luat thcv were universally withou". sufficient .shelter from the inclemen- 
ey of the season. Wood, he acknowledges, they might have in plenty; 
but then "they must have their night's rest perpetu;dly broken by the 
oidigation of keeping up their tires." IIow happy would be the poor 
in England, if they were subjected to the same •jbligatioii ! 

lids traveller moans, too, over the diet of the negroes in the lower 
parts of Soudi Carolina — rice, Indian meal, and dried fish ! He does not 
deny, that they arc amply supplied with the two first articles. Poultry 
he says, they may raise ; but ive know that they do raise it in abun- 
dance, and either consume it themselves, or by the .sale ot it, procure 
gratifications iintasted by the British labourer. If the subsistence upon 
vice be- so calamitous a lot, there is enough to engross the compassion of 
«n Englishman, in the fate of the vast majority of the population sub- 
ject to the Biiiish power in India. It is only on the rice land.s, and ge- 
nerally near the coast, Ihut the negroes of Carolina are stinted as to 
animal food : in what is called the upper countrj", it is given to them 
in suflicient quantity for a daily and plentiful meal. Throughout the 
slave- holdmg states, tiiere are diit'erences in the living of the blacks, 
according to the greater or less productiveness of the soil, the nature 
of the staple product, &c. But no where are they without whohscMTie 
victuals, adequate to the demai.ds of the appetite, and the support of 
the frame in its full vigour. Lie.ilenajit Hall remained a few we. ks at 
Charleston, and there picked up some stale anecdotes about th'- op- 
pression of the negroes. He fomul a Socrates in the black cook of a 
vessel,' condemned to death for poisoning tiie crew ; and has made a 
most ridiculous romance of the affair. Of the kidnapping of free ne- 
groes, he hoard something, and is moved, of course, to high indigna- 
;ion and rebuke. I do not deny t!ie atrocity of the crime, as odious to 



i NOTES- 

RT T. Americans Tn general as it can be to foreigners; but it has more than ' 
->^^^^_y onu direct parallel in fc^ngland, to divert the anger and denunciations of 
her sons from this unlucky country. Possiblj', our traveller may liave 
lieard of a practice, which Sir James Mackintosh has described as " a 
Jiouritihing though accursed trade,"* false accusation — the swearing' 
away tiie life or liberty of an innocent person, for the sake of the re- 
ward called A/ooJ 7no?ie^. I will make the reader further acquainted 
with it by a few extracts from the debates of the House of Commons. 

" Mr. Bennet said, (March '2, 1818,) that he was convinced he was 
not exaggerating, when lie averred, that it had been a long established 
practice in this country, (England,) for individuals, day after day, year 
after year, to stimidate oUiersto the commission of crime, for the pur- 
pose of putting money in their pockets by their conviction." 

"Mr. Bennet said, (April 13, 1818,) that in many cases, false evi- 
dence was given by police officer.s, \n order to bring the offence within 
the reach of the remuncralion. Mr. Slielton, the clerk of the arraigns 
at tlie Old Bailey, stated that too frequently these officers endeavoured 
to stretch the point, with the view of sharing in the price of blood. 
The calendars of the criminal courts estabhshed the same conclusion. 

"Fixed rewards have long been the great blot in our system of cri- 
minal procedure. 

"All the ]) -rscns who were connected with the pohce acknowledg- 
ed, that the principle of the present system was bad, and that, from 
the beginning of it to the end, instead of chfckuig or controlhng crime, 
it operated as a bounty to base and designing n»en, who went about, 
not merely to tempt adults to the commission of crime, but (which was 
the most lamentable fact,) to train up children to be criminals. ChiUlren 
of nine or ten years of age, inst(-ud of being indicted, as the\ ought \o be_, 
for picking pockets, were frequently, in liopes of the reward, indicted 
for highivay robberies Not many months ago, two children, one tliir- 
teen the otln;r mne years of age, were convicted of highway robbery, 
one of the witnesses being a child of six years of age; although he 
was as sure as he stood there, that were it not for the system of re- 
wards, their oifcnce vvould never have been ranked so high. 

"Tlie bank was known to give a reward of 7/ on the conviction of 
persons for passing bad money ; and this very circuiTistance was the 
cause of a great numhcr of the convictions which took place for that 
offence. A gr,eat many poor Germans, Swedes, and Irishmen, who 
were ignorant of the English language, were entrapped into the pass- 
ing of bad coin, by persons whose only object was, the getting of the 
reward offered in consequence." 

"Mr. Alderman Wood expressed his conviction, (April 21,1818,) 
that nine out of ten of the prosecutions for forgery in London, oiigi- 
nated with persons who were paid for exciting others to commit the 
crime This he was enabled to state, from official experience and au- 
thentic information." 

The kidnapping of children for the purpose of converting them into 
beggars and thieves, or of seliiiig them to those who are engaged in the 
lowest and most disgusting callings of civilized life, is of more frequent 
occurrence in. England, than the kidnapping of free negroes in the 
United States. Cases of child stealing, accompanied with circumstat\ce.s 
of monstrous barbarity, are daily announced in tho English gazettes. I 
will illustrate the fact and the process, by sorne quotations from the Re- 
port of the Committee of the House of Commons, concerning chimney 
sweepers. 

" Children are sometimes sold by their parents to master chimney 
sweepers, and oftentimes they are stolen. These children are very 

" jjouse of Commons, M.iy 4, 1818, 



NOTlES, ibo 

le to cough rmd inflammation of the chest, from their being out at all PATH' I. 
hours, and in all weathers: tliese are generally increased by the wretch- s.^-v'^**' 
edness of their habitations, as they too frequently have to sleep in a | 

shed exposed to the changes of the weather, their only bed a soot bag, 
and anotiier to cover them, independerit of their tattered garments. 

" They are very subject to burns, from their being forced up, chim- 
neys while on fire, or soon af er they have been on fire, and while over- 
heured ; and. howeTer they may cry out, their inhuman masters pay not 
the least attention, but compel them, too of' en with horrid imprecations, 
to i^roceed. They are sniiwtimes sent np cliimneijs on fire, 

"It is in evidence before your C)mmittee, lliat at Hadleigh, Barne.t, 
Uxbridgc, <md W\n(\-iO\; female cliildren iiave been em|)Ioycd. 

" It is .dso in evidetic , iliat the) are s.nlea from their parents, and in- 
veigled out of ■wovkhoHsea ; that, in order '■) •onqatr the naturrvl repug- 
nance of the infanis to asceivl the narrow aii.l dangerous chimneys, to 
clean which their labour is j-equii-ed, blows are used ; that pirn arejurceit 
into tlwir feet by tiie boy thai follows them up the chimney, in order to 
compel them to ascend it ; and that liglited straw has been applied for 
that purpose ; that the children are subject to sores and bruises, and 
wounds and burns on their thighs, kn"es, and elbows; and that it wilj 
require many months before tiie extremities of the elbows and knee.s 
become suftieiently hard to resist the excoriations to which they are at 
first subject. 

" 15ut it is not only the early and hard labour, the hpare diet, wretch- 
ed lodging, and harsh treatment, which is the lot of these children, but, 
in general, they ai-e kept almost entirely destitute of education, and 
moral and religious instruction ; they form a sort of class by themselves, 
and from their work being done early in the day, they are turned into 
the sU'eets to pass their time in idleness and depravity : thus they be- 
come an easy prey to those whose occupation it is to delude tiie igno- 
rant and entrap the unwary ; and if their constitution is strong enough 
to resist the disease and deformities which are the consequences of 
their trade, and that they should grow so much in stature as im longer 
to be useful in it, they are cast upon the world at the age of about six- 
teen: without any means of obtaining a livelihood, with no habits of 
industry, or rather, what too frequently happens, with confirmed habits 
of idleness and vice." 

The strong nerves of the English travellers would not tremble at these 
things. It is the kidnapping of the negro thai makes their flesh creep, 
and disturbs their repose. So too, they are in transports of philanthropic 
rage, with the negro driving,- an abo!i)inal)le trade ami spectacle, no 
doubt, but which Ins its counterpart in England, to be witnessed at all 
times throughout that land of freedom. "The English," suys Mr. 
Southey, (Espriella's Letters, letitr 26,) " boast of tlieir liberty, but 
there is no liberty in EngLmd for the poor. They are no longer sold 
with the soil, it is true ; but they car.not quit the soil if there be any 
probability or suspicion that age or inttrmily may disable them. If, in 
such a, case, tliey endeavour to remove to some situation where they 
hope more easily to maintain themselves, where work is more plentiful, 
or provisions cheaper, the overseers are alarmed, the intruder is ap- 
prehended, as if he were a criminal, and sent bade to his own parish. 
Whenever a pauper dies, that parish must be at the cost of his fnneral .- 
/nutavces, therefore, have not been -ivanting, of icretches in the last stage of 
•lispast, having been hurried (iwdjj in an of)en cart, itpon straw, and doing 
lUnn the road. Aui;. even -vomen in the very pains of labour, have been 
iriven out, and have perished by the ivay side, because the birth-place of 
the child would be its parish." 

I can furnish more recent, though certainly not more aiUhentic testi- 
iDiony. Mr. Simon,in his^" Joyirnalof aTour in Great Hritain," (ISlj) h 



V NOTES. 

-\T?T T. speaking of the Poor Laws, proceeds thus: "Among the necessary 
f-vVi^ consequences of this system, is a multiplicity of vexatious laws respect- 
'W'^ actdemeius, !)}■ wiiich the right of removing- at pleasure, from one 
part of tl'.c <;ountry to another, is so abi'idged, as to attach, in a great 
degree, the labouring class to the glebe, as the Russian peasant i^ 
reriiaps, beiiig bound to provide each for their own poor, it becomes :. 
matter of inipor'.ance to prevent new comers from acquiriiig a settiemejil 
by removal to a new parish ; and the poor are repulsed from one to the 
other like i'lfected persotis Thet; are sent back from one end of the kingdom 
to the ocher, as criminals for mer/i/ in France, de brigade en brigade. You 
meci on the highroads, Iivillnot say often, but too often, 'du old man on foot, 
' wil'i his littie buiid.e. — a helpless wiflow, pregnant ]}erhaps, and two 
or Lhrc'- baicfoctecl cliildren tuliosving her, become paupers in a place 
where they had yet not acquired a legal right to assistance, and sent 
awi) on tlia- account, to their original place of settlement, in the mean 
time, Ijy tiie overseers of the parishes on their way." Vol. i. p. 224. 

Mr. S rjrtits Jiourne, in proposing to the House of Commons, March 
25,15^19, ins bill !o regulate the settlement of the Poor, pointed out 
cniphau illy, tlie notorious practice of "sending back old paupers to 
their original parish, after liiej' hail spent their youth and labour else- 
where ; tearing them from their friends and neighbours." He dwelt 
tipon "the extreme harlship u])on the jiaupers, who, having ^resided 
many years, and formed coune.vions, were sent home to their parishes, 
and separated from all their friends and consolations to die in a remote 
poor-iiouse."* 

Xhe Am rican negro may, for aught I know, have much more sensi- 
bility than the English pauper; but I should, at first view, think the 
fato'of the latter, thus torn up by the roots, as it were, and transplanted 
to "a hot bed of vice and wretchedness," as the poor house is styled 
in the Parliamentary Reports, quite as severe an.' barbarous, and as dis- 
graceful to the country in which it is undergone, as that of the " driven" 
slave. In the history of civilized life, there is nothing more abomina- 
ble than the warfare carried on by the parishes in England against the 
poor. (See the ensuing Note.) 



(XOTE X. p. 411.) 

I wisn the American reader to be able to make an immediate compa- 
rison between the condition, physical and moral, of our negroes, and 
that of the labouring poor of England. 1 will, therefore, place before 
him a number of jjaragraphs concerning the latter, drawn from the 
Treatise of Colquhoun on Indigence, Esprieila's Letters, by Mr. Southey, 
and the Report of the f;ommittee of the House of Commons on the 
Poor Law s of tlie year 1817. I should premise that the statements of 
Colquhoun and Southey were made in 1806 and 1807, and that a great 
agt^ravation of all the evils of which they complain is admitted, on all 
hands, to have taken place within the few years past. 
COLQUHOUN. 

"It has been shown that above one million of individuals (1,234,768) 
in a country containing less than nine millions of inhabitants, have de- 
scended into a slate of indigence, requiring either total or partial sup- 
port from the public." 

"A very large proportion of this mass of indigence is to be traced to 
the bad education, and particularly to the vicious aod immoral habits of 
■the inferior ranks of the peojile." 

^ - 
*■ In 1803; tlie number of vagrants removed, was 194,052. 



NOTES. 

'* A prodigious number among' the la])ouring classes coliabit together 
villiout m.irriage, and again se])arate wlieii a ditlcTence ensues; and 
lieir miserable offspring, from neglect, aro rarely reared to maiurity." 

"The morals of ihe inferior classes of society have been greatly ne- 
glected. Vicious habits, idleness, improvidence, and sottishness, pre- 
vail in so great a degree, that until a right biassiiall have been given to 
the minds of the vulgar, joined to a greater portion of intelligence in 
respect to the economy of the poor, one million of indigent will be 
added to another, requiring permanent or partial relief, producing 
nltimately such a gangrene in the body politic as to threaten its total 
dissolution." 

" It will be seen also from late publications, that, after making very 
large allowances, at least 1,750,000 of the population of the country, at 
an age to be instructed, grow uj) to an adult state without any instruc- 
tion at all, in the grossest ignorance, and without any useful impression 
of religion or morality." 

" Innocent and culpable vagrancy are confounded together, and the 
vivtuou.s and vicious mendicant are subject to the same punishment. 
Persons wandering abroad and begging are by law to be ivhipped or 
imprisoned." 

"In many places, the workhouses on a small scale will be fotnid to 
be abodes of misery, which defy all comparison in human wretched- 
ness." 

" To innocent indigence they are all gaols -uithout guilt — punishment 
without crime." 

" A woi'king man maj' now go where he pleases, with his family, and 
exert his labour where it may be most advantageous to him, as long as 
lie can avoid asking parish relief; but if, from sickness, accident, or any 
affliction, depriving him, even for a short period, of the power of sup- 
porting his family, he is compelled to solicit aid from the parish, he is 
from that moment in a situation to be legally removed, to that from 
which he came originally ; and when so removed, he must never again 
return to the parish where he was in a situation to gain a subsistence, 
on pain of being treated as a rogue and a vagabond." 

" The constant intei'ferences respecting si-ttif ments have vmquestion- 
ubly given a most injurious bias to the minds of the labouring: people. 
In the various disputes about who shall afford them un asylum, they have 
been led to conceive that exertion and industry become less necessary, 
since the parish to which they belong is, under every circumstance, 
compelled to maintain them." 

" The frequency of these interferences on the part of parish officers, 
and t/ic mvltitndes ivho have been carted from place to place, ivith their chil- 
dren, have tended in no small degree to generate vagrancy, since they 
are alw^^ys unwelcome guests in the receiving parisiies. With charac- 
ters thus degraded and rendered doubtful, and often without a single 
relation or acquaintance in the place which has, through the refinements 
upon tlie law, been deemed their settlement, what are they to do r 
The parish oHicers have provided no means of employing them ; and 
for tlieir labour, their only means of subsistence, they can iind no ])ur- 
chaser, and yet they dare not return to the parish -where they could be useful 
to themselves and their couniry." 

" In this situation, unable to e.xist on the scanty pittance afforded by 
the parish, and without the means of filling up the chasm by their own 
industry, their characters assume a new and degraded form, and where 
not immured in a workhouse, they have no resource but to resort to 
the miserable alternative of hazarding a more degrading punishment by 
asking alms, where absolute infiniHty; does not estabiisli a claim to fu'' 
.subsistence." 



NOTES. 



SOUTIIEY. 



*' 'Hie chvellings of tlie labnuring manufacturers are in narrow slrcets 
and lanes, blocked up from light and air, and crowded togctlitr because 
every inch oUand is of such value, that, room for lig-lit and air cannot be 
afforded them. Herein Manchester a gi-ea: proportion of the poor lodge 
in cellars, dump and dark, where every kind of filth is suffered to accu- 
mulate, because no exertions of domestic care can ever make such 
homes decent. These places are so many hot-beds of infection ; and 
the poor in larg-e towns arc rarely or never without an infectious fever 
among them, a plague of their own, which leaves the habitations of the 
rich, like a Goshen of cleanliness and comfort, unvisited." 

" Wiien the poor are incapable of contributing any longer to their 
own support, they are removed to what is called the workhouse. I 
cannot express to you the feeling of hopelessness and dread with which 
all the decent poor look on to this wretched termination of a life of 
labour. 'I'o this place all vagrants are sent for punishment ; unmarried 
wonien with child go here to be delivered ; and poor or])hans and base- 
Dorn chikiren are brought up here till they are of age to be appren- 
ticed off; the otiier inmates are those unhappy people who are utterly 
lielpless, palish idiots and madmen, the blind and the palsied, and the 
old who are fnirlv worn out. It is not in the nature of things that the 
sujjerintendants of sucii institutions as these should be gentl^-heartedj 
when the superintendence is undertaking merely for the sake of the 
salary." 

" To this society of wretchedness the labouring poor of England look 
as their last resting place on this side of the grave, and rather than en- 
ter abodes so miserable, they endure the severest privations as long as 
it is i)ossible to exist. A feeling of honest pride makes them shrink 
from a place where guilt aijd poverty are confounded ; and it is heart- 
breaking fur those v.ho have reared afamily of their own to be subject- 
ed in their old age, to the harsh and unfeeling authority of persons 
yoimger than themse'\es, neither better bcirn nor better bred." 

"Perhaps the ])ain — the positive bodily pain which the poor of Bri- 
tain endure _/ro?n cold, may be estemed the wor.st evil of their poverty. 
Coal is evei'y where dear except in the neigiibourhood of the collieries ; 
and especially so in London, where the number of the poor is of course 
greatest. You see women raking the ashes in tlie streets, for the sake 
of theliulf burnt cinders. What a picture does one of their houses 
pi'esent in the depth of winter ! the old rowei'ing over a few embers — 
the children shivering in rags, pale and livid — all the activity and joyous- 
ness natural to their time of life chilled within them. The numbers 
who perish from diseast.s produced by exposure to cold and rain, by 
unwholesome food, and by the want of enough even of that, would 
startle as well as shock you. Of the children of the poor, hardly one- 
third are reared." 

"To talk of English happiness is like talking of Spartan freedom; 
the helots are ovi rlooked. In no country can such riches be acquired 
by commerce, but it is tlie one who grows rich by the labour of the 
hundred. The hundred human beings like himself, as wonderfully 
fashioned by Nature, gifted wiUi the like capa'itie.e, and ecjually made 
for immortality, are sacrificed body and soul. Horrible as it must needs 
appe.>r, the assertion is true to the very letter. They are deprived in 
childiiood of all instruction and :ill enjoyment; of the sports in which 
childhood insiinctively indtilges ; offi i sh air by.day and of r.itural sleep 
by night. Their heaUh, physic. d and moral, is alike dcslroved; they 
die of diseases induced by unremitting task-work, by confinement in 
the Impure atmosphere of crowded rooms, by the particles of metaTlic 



NOTES. 48S 

. -.egetabie clusl. wliich tliey are continually inlmling'; or tlicy live (o PART I. 
grow up wltliout cloccnc-y, wiUiout comfort, and wiihoiU iiope ; witli- ^^s'-v-'^-' 
out morals, without religion, and wiiiiout shame ; and liring forth shves 
like themselves to tread in the same path of misery." 

" Let us leave to England the boast of supplying all Europe with her 
wares. The poor must be kept m;serab!\- poor, or such a state of things 
coidd not continue ; tliere must be laws lo regulate their wages, not by 
the value of their work, but by ti»e pleasure of their masters ; laws to 
prevent their removal from one place to another within the kingdom, 
r.nd to prohibit their emigration out of it. 

"The gentry of the land are beltc lodged, better accommodated, 
better educated tiian their ancestors; the poor man lives in as poor a 
dwelling as his forcfaliiers, when they were slaves of the soil, works as 
hard, is worse fed, and not better taught. His situation, therefore, is 
relative!}' worse." 

There is nothing in the foregoing statements which is not fully con- 
firmed in the late lieports of the select committee of the House of Com- 
mons on ti-.e Poor Laws. The report dated Jul}', 18ir, makes, with the 
minutes of evidence taken before the committee, a folio of 168 pages. 
It unfolds a state of society extraordinary and deplorable beyond the 
utmost stretch of the imagination, in reference to a country, wearing, 
externally, an aspect of the highest general vigour and prosperity. The 
passages which I am about to extract can convey no idea of the im- 
pression left by the whole. 

" Your committee cannot but fear, from a reference to the increased 
numbers of the poor, and increased and increasing amount of the sums 
raised for their relief, that this system of poor laws is perpetually in- 
creasing the amount of misery it was designed to alleviate. 

•'The result appears to liavc been highly prejudicial to the moral 
habits, and consequent happiness, of a great body of the people, who 
have been reduced to the degradation of a dependence upon parochial 
support." 

" In 1803, the sum raised, ss poor rates, was 5,848,205/. ; in 1815, 
7,068,999/. It is apparent, that both tiie number of paupers, and the 
amount of money levied by assessment, are progressively increasing, 
while the situation of the poor appears not to have been improved. In 
practice, the burden has been imposed almost exclusively on land and 
houses." 

" Of tlie cultivator of a small farm, it has been said, forcibly and truly, 
that ' he rises early, and it is late before he can retire to rest ; lie works 
hard and fares hard ; yet with all his labour and his care, he can 
scarcely provide subsistence for his numerous family. He would feed 
them better, but the prodigal must Jirst be fed ; he would purchase 
warmer clothing for his children, but the ciuldren of the prostitute 
must ^first be clothed.' " 

"The independent spirit of mind which induced individuals in the 
labouring classes to exert themselves to the utmost, before they sub- 
mitted to become paupers, is much impaired; this order of persons are 
every day becoming less and less unwilling to add themselves to the 
list of paupers." 

'• Iri the petition from the parish of Wombridge, in Salop, the peti- 
tioners state, • that the annual value of lands, mines, and houses in this 
parish is not sufficient to maintain the numerous and increasing poor, 
even if the same were to be set free of rent, and that these ciicumstances 
will inevitably compel the occupiers of lands and mines to relinquish 
them, and the poor will be without relief, or any kno-vn mode of ob- 
taining it, unless some assistance be speedily afforded them.' And your 
committee apprehend, from the petitions before them, that this is one 
only of many parishes which are fast approaching to a state of derehc- 
tlon." 

Vox.. 1.-3 Q 



" in proportion to the aggregate number of persons wiioare reUuL-c '■ 
to this unfortunate dependence on parish relief, must he not only i: ^ 
increase of misery to each individual, but also the moral dcterioriaii m 
of the people." 

" The casualties of sickness and old age do not constitute the greater 
proportion of the demands upon the p.oor's rate which liave raised it to 
its present hi.<h amount ; a much greater proportion cohbists of allo'..- 
ances distributed in most parts of England to the labouring poor, ii 
addition to their wages, by reason of the number of tiieir children." 

"Not only the labourers who have hitherto maintained tliemselvts 
are reduced to seek assistance fi r^m the rate, but the smaller cajntalisls 
themselves are gradually reduced, by the burden of tiie assessments, to 
lake refuge in the same resource." 

" A practice has long prevailed in agricultural parishes, of sending 
men, out of work, to work for the inhabitants of the parisli, according 
to iheir share of the rate." 

" In 1815, the sums expended in litigation on account of paupers, 
and in iheir removal, amoimted to 287,000/. The appeals against orders 
of removal, entered at the four last quarter sessions, amounted to 4-,7Q0. 
Great, howevei', as the inconvenience confessedly is, of,this constant anci 
increasing litigation, there are still other effects of the law of settle- 
ment, which it is )et more important to correct; such are the frauds 
so frequently committed by those who are intrusted to prevent even 
the probability of a burden being brought on tiieir parish ; and such arc- 
the measures, justifiable undoubtedly in point of law, which are adopted 
very generally in many parts of the kingdom, to defeat the obtainini; 
a settlement ; the most common of these latter practices is that of hiring 
labourers for a less period than a year ; from whence it naturally and 
necessarily follows, that a laliourermay s])end the season of his heahii 
and industry in one parish, and be transferred in the decline of his life 
to a distant part of the kingdom." 

Muuites of Evidence — Extracts from the Examinations of different 
witnesses, overseers of the poor, &c. 

♦' What do you consider the capacity for accommodation of the work- 
house in your parish ; what number ought to be accommodated ? It 
will not acconmiodate more than 400 well ; there are many of ihem now 
three and four in a bed, and 1 believe the bo)s are six ,- tlie master told 
me so. If the house was spacious enough, I think I could write in ft 
hundred families to-morrow." 

" Joseph Fletcher, Esq. The poor-house, )'OU say, is overflowing , 
what is the capacity of the accomodation in that poor-house .-' — I think 
the poor-house never was intended to accommodate more than ISO, or 
20<J the outside, and we have in it, I believe, 260 or 270, if not more. 

*' How many sleep in a bed i" — two or three grown persons ; growij 
persons two in all beds, and some three, and some four. 

" Have you any means of separating the profligate from those well 
ordered and well behaved .'' — Not suflicient means j it is a difScult mat- 
ter to" say which are \ery bad, and which a little better." 

"Joseph Sabine, Esq. — You live in Hertfordsliire .'' — Yes. At one 
time your .poor were farmed ? Only tliose in the workhouse ; we now 
pay our workhouse man five shillings per head per week ; he midntains 
the paupers and has the benefit of their labour. 

*• From your extensive kn'jwiedge of tlie labouring classes, what do 
you suppose has been tiie cause of i];e general increase of poor's rates, 
and the decrease of haj>piness among tiieni ? Losing the feelings of 
indf^pendence tiiey Imd, and their mditt'erence about taking relief" 

" Tile liev. Richard Vernon. — You are rector of the parish of Bush f" 
Yes. Is your's a purely agricultural parish ? Yes. Would a man with 



NOTES. 4! 

... shillings a week maintain four in a family ? That must be cal- p \TiT 

;l:ile(lon the price of bread, or potatoes rather, for tliej' are cheap. \..^-\r-% 

"What are the weekly earnins^s of your labourers in general? 
rwelve shillings tiicy cull it. We have many families who do not be- 
long- to us, and we keep them in the i)arish for fear of what a pauper 
li'Hi su-ear, for to belong to a parish he tikes, he ~uill swear any thing. 

" \V'hat is your opinion of the workliouses ? That they act two ways, 
one a little good, and a very great evil ; the little good is, that they act 
as goals to terrify people from coming to the parish ; the evil is, that 
M'hen they are in, however loath they were to get there, they soon be- 
come used to it, and never get out again. 

" You conceive it corrupts the morals of the people ? Completely. 
1 believe it impossible to miix the lower orders of mankind without 
doing mischief. 

*' Should you not think workhouses, which should be considered as 
ho.spilals for the aged, and schools for the young, as beneficial to the 
individuals, and economical to the parish .■' Certainly not ; as schools for 
the young notliing can be more sliocking, except a gaol ; and as for the 
old, they are more comfortable a hundred times in private houses with 
their relations and friends. 

"Do you see any dispo.sition in the younger persons to help their pa- 
rents, by gi^■ing them any of their earnings ? .No ; the poor rate pre- 
vents tiiat; they must go to the parish." 

"John 15eiriiet, Esq. — In v.liai parish do you live.'' In Tisbur}' ; a 
large parish about three miles from Hindon. 

*' ITave you any persons whose wages will not maintain them and 
their families, to whom you give relief from the poor rates ? A vast 
number, T think tliree parts out of four of our labouring populatimi. 

'Do you think the morals of the lower classes have been much de- 

1 ioiated of late years ? "N'ery much. 

"Is the custom altered in your county of hiring their labourers short 
of tile year .'' Yes, we never hire by the year now ; we hire toevadethe 
settleaieiil of the labourer, for six, nine months, Stc. 

"1 am ])erfectly convinced the price of labour at present, and for the 
last three years (7s. per week) has never been repaid to the firmer, in- 
chiding all other things ; the firmer has never received a remuneration 
for the labour, generally including poor rates, taxes, and all other 
tilings." 

" Mr. William liankin. — You reside at Docking.'' Yes. You say the 
amount ol'the poor rate during the last year, in your parish, is about 
5000/. .'' Yes. Therate last year was nearly 18s. in the jjound ; this 
year it is 23.." .!>:!:> a.-, 

" Mr. Thomas Lacoast, of the parish of Chetsey. — Do you not con- 
ceive the labourers, if they were provided for in the house of a farmer, 
and under the superintendence of a master and mistresb, would be 
more capable of doing work, and at the same time live cheaper than if 
they provided for themselves:' — I certainly think it would be better for 
the labourers ? I am sure that a man who does not live well cannot do 
liie work so well as a man who does. 1 have a man who is very honest 
and works very hard, and I pay him long wages for doing it, and he has 
been at my house not less than nineteen hours out of the twenty-four; 
and I found he complained that he was not able to do the work, and I 
gave him his dinner afterwards every day, and since that he has been 
able to do the work." 

" Rev. J. W. Cuimingham. — ^You are vicar of Hirrow ? Yes. Have 
you any communication to make respecting ' Friendly Benefit Societies 
for the Poor.' 1 have had an opportunity of knowing perhaps sixty or 
seventy Friendly Societies, pretty .accuratcl)-, and Mie general state of 
those 1 have observed is of this kind : They are all held at public houses ; 



I'uelr priiici|jal universally is, either to forfeit or.e-eighth of the wijoi'. 
savings for liie beiu-fit of the i>ublic iionse, to spend in beer, or else 
onc-fouith. Among these sixty orsevent)", 1 do not know a single ex- 
ception to tiiat case ; they drink for the benefit of the house, a pot or u 
pint of beer each person. This morning' I was examining into the case 
of two in which there were sixty members; a member told me there 
were very raiely twen'.y who attended; therefore, in each of those 
cases they drank sixty jiols of beer, and of course got to a state in 
which; if they could, 1 hey would drink sixty more ; and that principle 
T believe to be almost universal ; it certainly is in my own neighbour- 
hood ; in a large number of those societies now, I need hardly say, that 
the demoralizing effects of Benefit Societies, under their present consti- 
tution, is perfectly enormous." 



(NOTE Y. p. 413.) 

The state of religion in America has been at all times a theme of 
invective and affected lamentation in England. As the majority of the 
Amevlcan population was composed, from the outset, of dissenters, the 
established church naturally found them horribly delinquent in respect 
to Christianity. We have English sermons of an early date, particu- 
larly one of the celebrated Archbishop Seeker, when Bishop of Ox- 
ford, delivered in 1740, before the British Society for the Propagation 
of tlie Gospel in Foreign Parts, in w1)ich New England is I'epresented 
as being without the knowledge of God, and about to return to " en- 
lire barbarism." His lordsliip particularly complained that there were 
several districts in Vmerica of sixty or seventy miles long, having but 
one minister to officiate in them. The case was undoubtedly the same 
in some parts of England and Scotland, when the reproof was uttered, 
and it is so still iu the latter country. We read in the history of the 
proceedings of the Hotise of Commons upon the propo.sition of Mr. 
Vansittart, (May 18, 1818,) to appropriate money to the building of 
new churches, what follows. 

" Mr. C. Grant said, that lie hoped the House would see the neces- 
sity of extending the benefits of the grant for the erection of new 
churches to Scotland. To his own knowledge, there were several dis- 
tricts in the northern part of the kingdom, some of sixty miles in length, 
and twenty in brcadlli, witiiout a church sufficient to contain the one- 
twentieth part of the population." 

The Quarterly Rrview has acknowledged, within the last threeyears, 
that the popidace of England are "more ignorant of their religious du- 
ties than they are in any other Christian country ;" and that " two- 
thirds of the lower order of English are errant and unconverted Pa- 
gans." N^evertheless, it holds itself entitled to commiserate our un- 
hajjpy lot, in being without an established church. We may fairly, 
therefore, enquire, by what traits this institution is distinguislied in 
England, apart from the circumstances of its having left so large a por- 
tion of her population in the darkness of gentilism. 

Before I adduce the extracts which I propose to make from British 
statements, for the illustration of the point, I ought to remind my 
reader, that the English hierarchy has an immense revenue ; but that 
those who discharge the common parochial duties of the church 
are miserably provided. In the year 1810, it was proposed by the 
British ministry to ajipropriate 100,000/. as a temporary relief for the 
poorer clergy. Some members of the Opposition suggested that in- 
stead of laying an additional burden on the people, the higher benefices, 



NOTES. 4a 

.ind the livings in the gift of the Crown, should ije taxed in favour of I'\IIT 1 
those real an. I almost starving labourers in the vineyar<l ofthe Gospel, v^r'v"'^ 
This plan was contested ami rejected. Tlie Report of the Dehate in 
Hansard's volume (xvii.) furnish.es the foiloiviny matter, part of the 
speecli of tlie Earl or Harrowby (the mover of the grant.) 

".'Vbout three fifths of the livings in England are in lay patronage, 
!k1 the a<lvowsons are a part of the estates of the proprietors, bought 
..nd soUl like otlier estates, for a valuable consideration. 

"Livings in private patronage are usuall\ disposed of to tlie friends, 
lelations, or private coimections of the patron. 

" The whole number of hvjngs under 15U/. a year did not. seem to 
exceed 40u0. 

" liut il had been generally supposed that the poor livings were 
chiefly confined to the parishes in which the population was inconsi- 
derable, and tlie duty light; remote villages, where we wished cer- 
tainl}' to give the clergj man a better income, because it was not fitting* 
that he sliould receive less than a day labourer, hut where his poverty 
was out of sight, and did not affect the interests of any considerable por- 
tion of the community. If such a supposition had been entertained, the 
accounts, now open upon the table, would prove its error. Of the 
whole number of livings under 150/. per annum, there were above 600 
which (in 1810) had a population of between 500 and 1000 persons, 
and near 500 livings, with a population of above 1000. Of these 79 
had between 2 and 3000 — 35 between 3 and 4000 — 17 between 4 and 
5000 — 10 between 5 and 6000 — and a considerable number much 
more ; perhaps the strongest instance was in the diocese of Chester. In 
15 parishes, of which six were in Liverpool, four in Manchester, three 
in Whitehaven, two in Oldham, one in Warrhigton, one in Blackburn, 
and one in Preston, there was a population of above 208,000 persons. 
The revenue of the church in these three parishes, was 1,315/. amount- 
ing to about l^d. per ann. per soul. In Wolverhampton, Coventry, 
Sunderland, and Newcastle, there were cases fully as strong. Taking 
492 as the number of parishes, of which the population exceeded 1000, 
and the income did not exceed 150/. per annum (exclusive of Birming- 
ham and Halifax, in which the population of the different parishes was 
not distinguished,) these 492 livings comprehended near 1,200,000 per- 
sons, and the aggregate revenue of the church was only 42 046/. 

"In stating the whole income of the church, in these 492 pai-ishe.s, 
to amount to only 42,000/ their lordships must be aware, that he had 
far overstated the actual incomes of those who performed these lahour8, 
because half at least of these parishes might be supposed to be held by 
non-resident incumbents, who would of course leave to their curates 
oiily a part of the profits of their livings. The hvmiber of livings, under 
150/. was 3997, and tlie resident incumbents were 1494." 

" Of incumbents, legally resident, in 11,164 parishes, there were, ac- 

cordirig to the bishop's returns in 1807, onii/ 4412. If you added to 

these, 152 persons, who lived in their own or iheir relatives' houses, 

within the parish, and 176 who lived near, and did duty, the number of 

incumbents legally or'virlualh' resident woidd amount to 5040. There 

v.ere 340 other per.sons returned as exempt, on account of cathedral or 

college offices, many of whom might probably be resident part of the 

ver.r, although they did not fulfil the conditions of legal residence, and 

(lie same observation might a|)ply to many other persons under dlfler- 

nt classes of non-residtnts. The number of 5040 wa.';, however, all 

liat appeared upon the returns; of these resident incumbents, those 

v ho possessed incomes under 150/, per annum, were, 1214; adding 

hose of this class who might be considered virtually resident, the num- 

>ei- would be 1494. It was, hov/ever, too large an alIo\vance to in 'hide 

iis virtual residents, ul! those who resided near, and did the duty, for 



'•i KDTES. 

MIT I. raany cases must occur In which the parish saw nothing' of its pastor, 
^^^_^^ except when lie perioriTied the service of church once a week, or once 
a mon'.li, in i!ie course of iiis morning- or evening ride. Of the remain- 
ing 2503 ])ariu!u:s, of vvliich the income was not 150/. a year, and where 
tile inni Pibeni neither actually nor virtually resided, the income of the 
officiating clergyman could only be what the incumbent was able to 
spare oui of his own pittance, or rather, generally, it must be the low- 
est price at which it was possible to get the labour performed. The 
power of the bishop to raise the salaries of the curates was rarely ex- 
erted, and its effect might be defeated by private agreement between 
the parties. 

" This was therefore the state of the church, as it appeared upon the 
returns; on 11,164 parishes there were 3556 legally, or actually resi- 
dent incumbents, with incomes of 150/. per annum, and 1494 with in- 
comes below that sum. The remaining 6124 parishes were left (sub- 
ject to the preceding observations) chiefly to the charge of curates. 
That ihe non-residc-nce of incumbents existing to so enormous an ex- 
tent, was a serious evil, hi- would not stop to argue ; the mam question 
was, whether it was an evil which the liberality of parliament, without 
a revision of the existing laws, respecting non-residence, and pluralities, 
could alone remedy. 

" The present practice, according to which, the nonresident incum- 
bents o! hvings of 50/., 60/., or 70/. a year, put into their own pockets a 
portion of this wretched piitant:c, and left iivich less than t/ie -wages of a 
day labovrerfor tlw subsistence of their curates, appeared to him far from 
creditable to the parties concerned, and calculated to degrade the cha- 
racter of the church. Many instances came withui his own knowledge, 
in v.liich parishes were served for 20/. or even for 10/. per annum, and 
in wliich, ofcour.se, all they knew of tlieir clergyman was the sound of 
his voice, in the reading desk or pulpit, once a week, or a fortnight, or 
a month. This must also be the case where curates are permitted to 
serve more than two churches. 

" In t)ie present state of the law, or at least, according to the present 
mode of executing it, there was a great difficulty in obtaining permis- 
.sion to erect an additional place of worship, according to the church of 
England, within the limits of an existing parish. The inliabitants, 
therefore, had no choice. They might prefer the church of England, 
but tliut church shut her doors against them; they had, therefore, no 
option, but either to neglect divine worship entirely, or to attend it in 
a form which they did not so well approve." 

After Lord Harrovvby had finished his statements, — of which that 
part relating to the non-residence of the reverend usufructuaries of no 
less than six thousand one hundred and twenty-four livings out of 
eleven thou.sand one hundred and sixty-four, is so instructive and ex- 
traordinary — the Earl of Stanho|ie proceeded in this strain: 

" However he might in general differ from the noble earl, he had 
always listened to him with a certain degree of satisfaction, because 
that noble earl always appeared as contradistinguished to many of his 
colleagues, to speak really what he meant. , 

"In his present speech tliere was much to approve, and he had only 
to observe, th.'it if from his lips similar observations had fdlen, he would 
be charged as the hbeller of the church, as the enemy of our rehgious 
interests, and the plague knew what. 

« He woidd venture to predict, that, whether you voted six millions, 
or sixty millions, whether you built churches or no churches, whether 
you co'hunniated Dissenters or otherwise, the number of communicants 
of the establishment woidd decrease, and that of Dissenters increase, as 
long as they saw the church of England made the engine of state policy; 
as long as they saw.its prelates translated and preferred, not for their 



NOTES. 

-vjligious merits, but tlieir slavish support lo tlie ministers of tlic day. 
'i'or he would ask tlie noble carl fairly to answer, if lie knew of no pre- 
ferments in tlie higlier ranks of the clertjy conforreil upon such pre- 
tensions ? When lie saw the bishops, acconfing to the injunctions of 
their reiig'ion, voting against wars, when lie saw them voting for the 
libertiesof the people, then he would pronounce tiiat the church of 
England had no reason to fear." 

With the established religion there exists, strange as it may appear, 
avast deficiency of places of worship, so that a great proportion of the 
British population, gri ater, I will venture to assert, than the proportion 
of our own so situated, has no access to public worship. I will offer in 
proof, the statements made the last year in the House of Commons, on 
the occasion already mentioned, of a grant for the erection of new 
churches. 

♦' The Chancellor of tiic Exchequer observed, (March 16, 1818,) that, 
for more than a cenUtnj, the want of accommodation for public worship 
iiad been felt by the members of the established church as a most se- 
rious evil ; and an attempt had been made so long ago by parliament to 
remedy it, so far as respected the metropolis and its inuncdiate vicinity. 
This attempt, however, though attended with considerable expense, 
had been very imperfect in its execution, only elmen churchen having' 
been bttiU out of fifty, which it was proposed to erect. Since that time 
no farther steps had been taken by public authofity, though the evil 
had been perpetually increasing with the growing population of the 
coantry. He had extracted from Parliamentary accounts a list of twenty- 
seven parishes, in which the deficiency of churclies was most enormous. 
The excess of the inhabitants beyond the means of accommodation in. 
the churches exceeds 20,000 in each. Of these, sixteen were in or about 
London, and eleven in great provincial towns. In three of them the ex- 
cess in each was above 50,000 souls : — in four more from 40 to 50,000 ; 
— in eight from 30 to 40,00u : and in the remaining twelve, from 20 
to 30,000. In Liverpool, out of 94,376 inhabitants, 21,000 only could be 
accommodated in the churches, leaving a deficiency of 73,376 ;: — in 
Manchester, of 79,459, only 10,950, leaving 68,509; andinMary-le-bone, 
of 75,624, no moi'e than 8700, leaving 66,924 without the means ofac- 
commodation. It thus appeared, that in three parishes only, there were 
near 210.000 inhabitants who could not obtain access to their churches. 

«' The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated, (March 18, 1818,) that 
the population of London and its vicinity, was 1,129,551 ; of whom the 
churches and episcopal chapels can only contain 151,536, leaving an ex- 
cess of 977,915. 

"In the dioceses of York and Ciiester, the disproportion of popula-, 
tion to the capacity of churches, was little lessthanin the district of the 
metropolis. In the diocese of York there were ninety-six churches, 
which afford room for 139,163 inhabitants — the whole population 
amounted to 720,091, so that there was a deficiency of accommodation 
for 580,928. In that of Chester, there were one hundred and sixty-seven 
parishes, the churches in which vvould contain 228,696; hut the actual 
population was no less than 1,286,702, leaving a dehciency of 1,040,006. 

"In cases such as these, the impossibility in which the fiu- greater part 
of the inhabitants were placed, of attending divine service even once 
a day, was, however, by no means the only evil. There were many 
other most important functions of his sacred office, wliich it was impos- 
sible for anv? clergyman, however zealous and laborious, adequately to 
discharge towards a population of 40 or 50,000 souls, or even a much 
smaller number. 

With respect to the deficiency in the number of places for public 
worship. Lord Selsey remarked, " th^ fact was too notorious to require 



r«OTEg. 

explanallun. Miuiy imvta of t!ie Idngdoiii, he iamentcd to say, were u: 
terly destitute of any means of acquiring moral instniclion." 

The chancellor of the exchecjuer observed, on ihe same occasion on 
which we made the statements quoted from him above, that the church 
of Scotland stood equally in need of assistance. The committee of the 
church of Scotland has, in fact, lately represented, that, in that country, 
there are forty-seven parishes in need of churches or chapels, and eijhtij- 
dght other parishes hut ill supplied with religious instruction. 

During- the discussion, in the House of Commons, of the question of 
erecting new places of worship, the following, among many representa 
tions of like import, were made by members of the highest dislmclion 

Lord Milton said, that " there was hardly a parish church in the king- 
dom, in which great encroachments had not been made, by persons of 
wealth, on that part of the church which was the property of the popu- 
lation of the parish." 

" Where tithes exist," said Mr. Brougham, " the pastor is seen in the 
light of a tax-gatherer. Among the causes of irreligion or lukewarni- 
iiess, and ecclesiastical feuds and schisms, he believed none to be so 
prominent as the disputes which arose out of tithes." 

"Alarge prnjm-tion," SM.(\ Sir Charles Monck, " of the present endow 
ments of the church, are employed in a manner not at all calculated t(» 
promote tiie interests of religion." 

The mere tact of non-residence, that is to say, the total personal de- 
reliction of their parishes, by so large a proportion of the holders of 
benefices, ministers of the Gospel, who had solemnly declared, on enter- 
ing into holy orders, that they verily believed themselves moved by the 
iioly Ghost, — the mere fact bespeaks a great perversion of character 
and functions among the clergy of the eslablisiied church. It is in a 
}}ritish publication of no inconsiderable note and autiiority, the Christian 
Observer, for Nov. lall, that I find the following details, which could 
not have been hazarded, if not in great pan indisputably true. 

" Christianity forms little or no part in the regular plan of instruction 
?.t our universities. Contrary to our experience in every other profes- 
sion, candidates for our ministry are taught every branch of science but 
that in which they are to practise. Chapel is not attended till it is half 
over. Many go there intoxicated, as to a kind of roll call ; and though 
the assumption of the Lord's supper is peremptory upon the students, 
no care is taken to teach them its importance." 

" So very lax has become the examination for orders, that there is 
no man, who hastuken a degree at the university, who cannot reckon 
on ordination as a certainty, whatever his attainments in learning, mo- 
rals, or religion." 

" A great proportion of our clergy are a set of men, wrapt up in secu- 
lar pursuits, with a total indifference to the spiritual duties of their call- 
ing. Many of them seem to consider, that they are appointed to a hfe 
of sloth and inactivity, or merely to feed upon the fat of the land; -and 
that, in return for immense and growing revenues, they have only to 
gabble through a few furm^l offices." 

*' .Many in the higher ofHccs of the church are distinguished for learn- 
ing and pictv, but for all this, we may fear that a great proportion of the 
clergy are the very reverse of these high examples — and betray an indif- 
ference of conduct, and dissoluteness of manners, which, whilst it is most 
shaniefid to them, would not be borne with in any other state of life." 

" A horse race, a fox chuse, or a boxing match, is never without its 
reverend attendants ; and the man, wiio, in the house of God, hurries 
over the offices of devotion, as beneath his attention, will be seen, the 
iiext day, the noisy toast master, or songster, of a club. Their profes- 
sional indolence, hut one degree removed from positive misconduct , 



NOTES. 

icir occasionul aclivily, at a county election, in a cathedral county 
luwn. You have the hcMiour of finding yourself, in sucli contests, act- v, 
inj; in concert with d-^ans, chancellors, archdeacons, prebendaries, and 
minor canons, without luuiihcr. On such occasions grave, very grave 
persons are to be seen, shouting the chorus of some election ribaldry, 
whose zeal, w even common industry, upon important topics, had never 
been witnessed." 

^Ve are not av a.lnss for still higher authority on this subject. The 
late Disliop Watson, of Liandaff, wrote thus in his " Memoirs" recently 
given to tiie world. 

" It has been said (1 believe by D'Alembcrt,) fjiat the highest offices 
in church and suite resemble a pyramid whose top is accessible to only 
two sorts of anin^.als, eagles and reptiles. My pinions were not strong 
enough to pounce upon its top, and I scorned b)- creeping to ascend its 
summit. Not that a bishoprick was then, or e\er, an object of my am- 
bition ; for 1 considered t])e acquisition of it as no proof of personal 
merit, inasn:uch as bisliopricks are as often given to the Jlatterivg depend- 
ants, or to the unlearned younger branches of noble families, as to men 
of the greatest erudition; and 1 considered the possession of it as a 
frequent occasion (if ])ersonal demerit -, for I s(nv the geneiaiity of the 
bishops hartering their indcpendrnce and the dignity of their order for the 
cluuicc of u translation ; and poihiting gospel humiliiy by the pride of 
prelacy. I used then to say, and i say so still, rc-nder the office of 
a bishop respectable, by gi\ing some civil distinction to its possessor, in 
order that his exam|)le may have n;ore weigid with both the laity and 
clergy. Annex to each bishoprick some portion of the ro}al ecclesiasti- 
cal patronage vjhich is now proslitntcd by the chancellor and the ininister' of 
the day to the purpose of parliamentary comtption." 

in a remarkable work, entiiled, "The .State of theEstablished Church, 
in a series of lietters to the Right Honourable Spencer Pei'cival," it is 
saitl, that the London clergy allbrd a faint, though laudable exception 
to the above gerteral description. 1 am not disposed to question the 
fact, but I lay before the American reader, that he may judge for him- 
self, the following extract from the [jroceedingsof the British House of 
Connnons, on the 24th Marcii, lbl9. 

" Sir .James Graiiam called the attention of the house to the situation 
f)f the clei-gy of hf'y of the parislies in the city of London. In thirty 
out oi'{\\effly parishes, the peiiiini.ns performed the duty in person." 

" Mr. Harvt-y said, he was of opinion that the petitioners were endea- 
vouring, by slow, but sure degrees, to accomplish designs which (hev 

ired not unfoUi at once, as they knew the rapacity which -was their cha- 
■ icteristic, would not fail to cause the house to repel them with indigna- 
iion if those designs were fully known. The Hon. Baronet had en- 
deavoured to awaken the sympathy of the house for these gentlemen, 
but he (Mr. Harvey) stated almost all of them to have 400/. per an- 
num, and some had 6001. or more. Above twenty were pluralists, and 
if they had no residence in the city, it was because they were the best 
calcidators in it, and preferred letting their houses f(u- the sake of 
the profit that might be thus obtained. Not one of them dared to call 
on the house to take his individual case into consideration. The value 
they tliemselves .-ittaciied to their own labours, might be collected 
from the sums they paid to the curates who officiated for them, and who 
received 50/., 60/., or 70/. per annum from those who were in they earlv 
receipt of 1000/., 1500/., or 2000/." 

Now what are the character and situation of the episcopal clergy 

ihroughout this country, where the church is divorced from the state f 

As a body they are, unimpeachable in all respects; of the best morals 

and most regular habits; indefatigable in discharging the most solemn 

f trusts; ever at the post of duty. One small part of them is no" 

Vol.. I. — 3 R 



NOTES. 

endowed with princely revenues, while tlie m.^jority drag on a life o ■ 
indigence ant! abjection. The provision for each member is not ample, 
but for t lie most part enougli to assure a decent, conifbrlable, and inile- 
j)endent existence. The same remarks may be extended to our regidar 
clergy of every description, among wliom non-residence and pluralities 
are unknown, and whose stipend arises directly as it weie, from the 
esteem and confidence of their parisliioners. 

The detections lately made in England, respecting the abuse of tlif 
public charities, with which the established clergy arf; so largely con- 
nected, furnish additional proof of the state of tilings implied by the 
circumstance of " three-fifths of the livings being in lay jjatronage, 
and being usually disposed of to the private coimexions of the patron." 
The bill for enquiring into the malversLition of the charities, which 
Mr. Brougham, us the chairman of the education committee, introduced 
into the House of Commons, was vehemently opposed in the upper 
house by the prelates, and destroyed through their influence. There 
are, it would seem, five hundred free schools in England and Wales, all 
of which are grossly perverted from their purpose. " It is ab.soluteh 
necessary," said Lord Eldon, speaking r.s chancellor, (C. 13. V. 580,) 
•'that it should be perfectly known that charity estates all over the king- 
dom are dealt with in a manner most grossly improvident, amoiinlinf^ 
to the most direct breach of trust." The Report of the committee of 
Parliament on the education of the lower orders, (May 1818,) is still 
stronger on this head. " It appears clearly from the returns," s.'tys the 
committee, "as well as from other sources, that a very great deficiency 
exists in the means of educating the poor, wherever the population is 
thin and scattered over the coimty districts. The efforts of individuals 
combined in societies, are almost wholly confined to populous places." 

" In the course of their enquiries, j'our committee have iiici<lentally 
observed that charitable funds, connected with education, are not alone 
liable to great abuses. Equal negligence and malversation appear to hav< 
prevailed iji all other charities." 

Mr. Brougham, the chairman of the committee, said (June 2d, 1818,) 
♦* that it had been generally granted, indeed, nothing was more manifest 
to the committee of that house, that abuses prevailed, not alone in the 
charities connected with education, but in all other public chiuities, of 
what description soever. He would pledge himself to j)rovethat ofali 
the charities in which abuses exist, none were greater or grosser than 
in those where special visitors (to charitable institutions) were appoint- 
ed. A variety of causes concurred to produce this evil. In some in- 
stances these visitors resided at a distance, and never exercised their 
powers; in others the visitor was the patron of the school, and did not 
correct abuses to which his system led ; in others the visitor was the 
heir at law of the endower, and had rather pocket the fund.s than ap- 
ply them to the proper purposes ; and of course he did not vi.sit his own 
sins very heavily on his own head. Indeed he could say positively that 
the grossest case of abuse that came before the committee, was of a 
charity where special visitors have been appointed, but who had never 
attended to their duties for twenty years." 

As a specimen of these abuses, 1 take the following instance related 
in Mr. Brougham's admirable pamphlet — ^the " Letter to Sir Samuel 
Komilly, respecting the Charities." ' i 

" The Dean and Chapter of Lincoln have the patronage as well as the 
superinten<lence of Spital chaiity ; yet they allow the warden, s67J of 
their Diocesaji, to enjoy the produce of large estates, devised to him iV/ 
trust for ike poor of two parishes, as well as of the hospital, while he only 
pays a few pounds to four or five of the latter. The Bishop himself is 
patron and visitor of Mere, and permits the warden, his nephew,, (for 
whom he made thft^yacancy by promoting his predecessor,) to enjoy and 



NOTES. 499 

tiKlerlet a coii3i(]erable trust estate, paying only 2-1/. a year to tlie PAllT f. 
imor." (P. 25.) v.^^^^^^^ 

"Tlie statutes of Winchester College require, in the most express 
terms, that only "the poor and indigent" shall be admitted upon the foun- 
dation. They are, in fact, all cinldren of persons in easy circumstances ; 
many of opulent parents. Boys, when they attain the age of fifteen, 
solemnly swear that they have not 3/. 6s. a year lo spend; yet as a 
practical commentary on this oath, they pay ten guineas a year to the 
masters, and the average of their expenses exceed 50/. It is ordered 
that if any boy comes into the possession of property to the anioimtof 
^l. SI year, he shall be expelled; and this is construed 66/. 13a. 4(:/. re- 
gard being had to the diminished value of money, although the v/ar- 
dens, fellows and scholars all swear to observe tlie statutes " according 
to their plain, literal, and grammatical sense and understanding. The 
infractions of the original statutes are sought to be justified by the con- 
nivance of successive visitors, and it is alleged that they have even 
authorized them by positive orders (injunctions). But tiu- statutes ap- 
pointing the visitor, expressly prohibit him from altering tiiem in any 
manner or way directly or indirectly, and declare all acts in conlraveu* 
'Ion of them absolutely null. 1 must add, that notwithstanding the dis- 
regard shown to some statutes and some oaths, there was a strong dis- 
position manifested in the members of the college to respect those 
which they im:igined bound them to keep their foundation and their 
concerns secret."* 

In his speech of May 1818, on this subject, Mr. Brougham stated, 
•' that the whole income actually received by charities of all descriptions, 
might be between 7 or 800,000/.; but the sum which ought to l)e re- 
ceived by charities was nearer two millions sterling than fifteen liun- 
dred thousand ;" and his accoimt of the formation of this immense fund, 
GO infamously plundtrcd and dilapidated, is not a little remarkable. 

" It is impossible," said the orator, "for me to close these remarks 
without expressiiig th.e extraordinary gratification which I feel, in ob- 
serving how amply l!ie poor of this country have in all ages been en- 
tlowcci by the piou^; mnniiicence of individuals. It is with unspeakable 
delight that 1 contL-mplato tlie rich gifts that have been bestowed — the 
Iionost zeal displayed by private persons for the benefit of their fellow 
creatures. When we enquire from whence proceeded those magnifi- 
cent endowments, we generally find that it is not from the public po- 
licy, nor the bounty of tiiose who in their day possessing princely re- 
venues, were anxious to devote a portion of them for the benefit of 
mankind — not from tiiose, who having amassed vast fortunes by public 
employment, were desirous to repay in charity a little of what they 
had thus levied upon the state. It is far more frequently some obscure 
jjersonage — some tradesman of humble birth, who, grateful for the edu- 
cation which had enabled him to acquire his wealth through honest in- 
dustry, turned a portion of it from the claims of nearer connexions to 
enable other helpless creatures in circumstances like his own, to meet 
the struggles he jiimsclf had undergone." 

The guardianship of wliat the honest tradesir>an had thus nobly ap- 
propriated, fell in a great measure to the establisheil church as such, and 
the consequence is the waste of nearly two-thirds by embezzlement 
and neglect ! It is incredible what opposition was made both in and out 
of parliament to the idea of a parliamentary commission for enquiring 
into cliarilies having special "visitors, governors and overseers'." 
"Almost every considerable charity," .says Mr. Brougnam, "is subject 
to special visitation. We (the education committee) were severely re- 
prpved for pushing our inquiries into establishments destined it was 
said for the education of the upper classes, while our instructions 

* P. 51, 2. 



oo 



NOTES. 



ART I. confined us to schools for the lower orders. Unfortunately, we ri.' 
^-y-^/ sooner looked into any of these institutions, than we found that this ob- 
jection to our jurisdiction rested upon the very abuses, which we were 
investigating, and not upon the rtal nature of the foundation. For as 
often as we examined any establishment, the production of the charter 
or statutes proved that it was originally destined for the education of 
the poor.* The alarms conceived by the members and friends of the 
church at the prospect of a thorough investigation, and tlieir strenuous, 
and in part successful, efforts to avert that calamity, are strikingly 
contrasted, as they are related by Mr. Brougham in his pamphlet, with 
tlie fact announced in the following statement. 

" Tlie Chanccilor of the E.xchequer said (House of Commons, June 
od, 1318,) that the bill (on the subject of the olviritable institutifin in- 
quiry) exempted the scJioois of Quakers, and yet he was a'.uhori/.ed to 
say from that respectable body of men, tliat they had not only no objec- 
tion to the examination of their few charitable schools, but tliat they 
should rejoice at finding them made the subject of Parliamentary in- 
quiry." 

The advantage of an establislied church, as regards the cause of Chris- 
tians, if not imaginary, would he she'vn, at least in the greater morality 
and decorum of the lives of its professors and constiiutionai supporters. 
If it failed to make real Christians and e.\em|)hiry citizens of its imme- 
diate allies, its superior influence in Uiis respect with the mass of a na- 
tion might well be questioned. We have seen how the case stands as 
to the Episcopal clergy, in England. Now, what is it as to the royal 
family, the peers, and gentry 1 Ha^^e the princes set a Christian ex- 
ample ^ In the scandalous debate of the House of Commons (April 
loth, 1818,) respecting tlie marriage of the royal ftmily. Ion', (lastle- 
reagh remarked that "of the seven sons of his Majesty, not one, al- 
though the youngest was forty -five years of age, hail any lawful issue. 
To excite some of the members of the royal family to marriage was 
now an object of consequence. The Prince Hegent, sensible of this, 
had made oftisrs to such of his royal brothers as could reconcile mar- 
riage to their feelings." 

The open concubinage in which they have lived, without being pro- 
scribed by the estabhshed cluircli, is sufficiently notorious. i)n the 
subject of these misogamisls, I need only repeat tiie phrase (ifMr. Wil- 
berforce, uttered in the House of Commons on the day after the debate 
just mentioned. 

"As to the allusion made to the character of the princes, he agreed 
that we had no right to enter into the discussion of any man's private 
character. But yet it was impossible to suppress what we saw, and 
felt, and thought!" 

To what class of persons belong those flagrant cases of adultery with 
which the English newspapers ar.- filled .■' To-t!ie noi)ihty and gentry, 
the hereditrHry pillars of the estublhhmeiit. 'Who give the grand dinner 
parties and cdiicerts, which distinguisti the Sabbath in London ? Who 
make a gala-da^- of it in the Park, and in fact take the lead in its dese- 
cration ? How is it spent by the high officers of state, the.cabinet-minls- 
ters, ike. 

The spirit of toleration is not, indeed, the distinguishing trait in the 
history qf the Christian world, but this spirit i.s, doubtless, one of the 
ends of Christianity. How far it has been displayed and cultivated by 
the established church of England, is seen from the contents of a pre- 
ceding note (V). I will make the case somewhat more plain by a few 
additional facts stated upon Parliamentary authority. There are ver)' 
near one hundred and fifty acts on the British statute book, relative to 

—. —^^ , 

* Letter to sir Samuel Komilly, p. 481. 



XOTES. 

est oatlis, of supremacy, allegiance, abjuration. Sec. (Mr. Croker, May PATJ 
3.1, 1819, House of Commons.) Catholic emaiicipi.tion lias liecii now 
agitated in Parliament since forty years. (Mr. Graltan, May 3cl, 1819) 
The principal tenets of the Catholic religion — transuhslantiation, the sa- 
crifice of the mass, the invocation of saints, are still declared idolatrous, 
on the British statute-book. Tims, near five millions of thx^ inhiihi- 
t^jits of the British Isles, are held and stigmatized by law as idolaters. 
Earl Grey, in the House of Lords (May 17lh, 1819,) and general Thorn- 
ton, in the House of Commons (May Ztli, 1818,) moved to expunge from 
the British code, this insult and injustice to so large a portion of liis ma- 
jesty's subjects; but they could make no impression upon the majority 
of Parliament. Tlie Enrl of Uonouglimore, in supporting the Catholic 
petition, in the House of Peers, in 1818, related the following anec- 
dote : 

The Earl of Donoughmore s.'iid " a circumstance had happened in the 
metropolis itself, which he would slate. Jt was a toast given in a large 
societi/ of gentlemen, and which is resorted to by none but persons who, 
in point of situation and property, are entitled to that denomination. 
But what was this toast .'' it was so nauseous and disgusting, that it was 
with difficulty that he could prevail upon himself to pollute their lord- 
ships House by the mere repetition of it. "The pope in the pillory, 
the pillory in hell — pelted with priests by the devil!" 

" But this was not a mean drunken folly; — it was the sober malignity 
of the bigot which the unguarded sincerity of beastly debauch had in- 
tliscreetly brought into open day. And all this took place in the me- 
tropolis, as he had already stated, which was the station of a Parlia- 
ment, and is still the residence of the king's representative." 

Thus, in whatever point of view we look at the established church 
in England, we do not find it accomplishing any thing for Christianity 
beyond v. Iiut is effected elsewhere under a different system. It has 
not produced a better clergy; nor a more moral gentry; nor a more 
educated and christianized people ; it has left a great part of the nation 
without instruction; without temples of worship ; it has tended to de- 
grade the clerical character by the intrigue and competition to which 
its large livings have given rise ; and by the abject ])overty and dis- 
parity of lank to which those of its professors not so fortunate as to gain 
the prizes in the lottery, have been condemned. It m;iy be an e.vcel- 
lent engine of state; but, as our civil institutions, with which we are per- 
fifctly content, do not stand in need of such aid, we cheerfully leave 
the honor and profit of it to England. 



(NOTE Z. p. 424.) 

Is addition to the facts respecting tlie condition and character of the 
British popuUition and institutions, which 1 have scattered through the 
preceding notes; I will present the reader, here, with a miscellany of a 
similar purport, vouched by parliamentary and other unquestionable 
evidence. It cannot be thought harsh, if, too, I subjoin a few extracts 
from Briti.sh newspapers and journals, in the manner of the English 
iTavellers and critics, when they treat of our affiiirs. The Quarterly 
Jleview lays great stress upon scraps picked out of American gazettes, 
us illustrations of the state and morals of the whole American people. 
Xec lex ulla sequior est, &c. 

HOSPITALS, PRISONS, IMPRISONMENTS, &c. 

In 1814, says the Parliamentary Iveport on the Police of the Metro- 
polis, ninety-eight boys under sixteen were committed to Newgate ; 
f.-iur of thorn of nine ycar.s, eight of them of ten j'ears, and twelve 



i NOTfcS. ' 

lRT I. of them of eleven years of ag-e. Tn ISlo, ninety-eiglit boys under 
-y-'^^ sixteen were committed; and in4816, 146 cf the same age were com- 
mitted. In 1816, there were commiUed 1683 persons under twen- 
ty, of these 1281 were of seventeen and under, and 957 of these of se- 
venteen years of age and under, were committed for felonies. From 
the 25th of August, 1814, to October 1816, 200 boys liad been in cus- 
tody. Of these, twenty-tree liad been in custody for the fu-st offence ; 
one aged sixteen liad been forty times in custody, and another l^ad beeli 
eighty times in custody; and 170 of them had been from tliree to four 
times in custody, for different offences. Of tliese 200 tiiere were con- 
victed 141; 26 of them capitally, the youngest of these was nine and a 
lialf years old; 42 w'ere transported, llieyoungest of llieni was eleven; 
and 73 were imprisoned for different terms. Of these 200 two-thirds 
were under fourteen, and down to eight years of age. Tiie remainder 
one-third were from fourteen to seventeen years of age. Of these 200 
miserable beings, two-lhirds could neither read nor v/rite. 

"On the sabjectof transportation, it appeared, that since 1812, 4659 
persons had been transported to Hotany IJay, of whom 3978 were males, 
and 681 females. Of these, 1116 v.ere under twenty-one; of whom, 5 
were of eleven years; 7 of twelve years; 17 of thirteen years ;' 32 of 
foiu'teen years; and 65 of fifteen years of age. Of tliese 4659 persons^ 
2055 were transported for life, 726 for fourteen years, and 1916 for se- 
ven years. Of 2038 who were on board the iuilks in 1815, tliere were 
111 under twenty years of age, amongst whom one was of eleven, two 
of twelve, and four of fourteen years of age. T!ie number of boys of 
seventeen and under, confined in Newgate in 1317, was 359, and in 
1818, of persons under twenty-one years of agt^, six hundi-ed, including 
males and females." 

" On the first day of January, 1817, there were on board the different 
hulks, two thousand and fo.ty-one prisoners; from, vvliich time to the 
first of January, 1818, two thousand three hundred and sixty-four were 
received on board from tiie diiferent goals; one thousand seven !uin- 
dred and ninety have actually been transported to New South Wales, 
(being an excess of the preceeding year of seven hundred and eight} ■ 
two prisoners,) forty-five have died ; and four hundred and tliirty-seven 
have been discharged, or removed to other places of confinement ; leav- 
ing on board the respective ships on the first of .lanuary, 1818, two 
thousand one hundred and thirty -two prisoners." (Official Report to 
Lord Sidmouth.) 

The third Report on the Prisons of the Metropolis, states, th.ii; 
through three o^ the prisons "tliere passed in 1819, 10,371 persons, all 
of whom must have gone away more corrupt than 'hey came." 

In the Report on Mendicity ?.nd Vagrancy, of the House of Com 
mons, it is stated, that in one half of the cases of those who beg, beg 
gary is the effect of real distress. 

The number of street mendicants in London, was returned at 15,238, 
of whom 9218 were children. 

Mr. Bennet said, June 5, 1818, "the House of Commons was proba- 
bly not aA-are, that, from tlie year 1816 to 1818, no less than 3600 had 
been sent to Botany Bay ; ar.d that from the year 1798, it had cost tiie 
country no less than foiir millions to defray the expense of transporta- 
tion." 

In the three first months of the year 1818 — 118 persons were tried 
for forgery of Bank of England Notes — the expenses for whicii were 
Z.19,982 5s. 6d 

Lord Castlereagh (March 1, 1819,) admitted, that it appeared by tiie 
feturns, that within the last three oi- four years, crime Imd increased to 
an alarming extent, almost in the proportion of two to one ; and com- 
paring the commitments of the last year with those ten years ago, in 



NOTES. 

some classes of crime they were in the ratio of nearly three to one. 
Such a view was in some respects appalling. The punishment of death, 
certainly had increased in frequency in these kingdoms. At the close 
of the year 1805, the number of capital convictions was 350, and at the 
termination of the last year 1250." 

Alderman Wood observed, (March 1, 1819,) "the great increase of 
crimes was to be ascribed to the promiscuous congregation of prisoners 
left without employment. He had, by virtue of an authority from Lord 
Sidmouth, visited all the gaols in the country, and was convinced that it 
would take nix or seven years lo make un efficient parliamentary in- 
quiry." 

Mr. W. Wynne, (March 11, 1819.) " He was shocked to find, and 
every man of humanity would shudder at the idea, that the lunatic sel- 
dom or every obtained his release." 

Mr. Beniu;t, (May 20, 1818,) presented theHeport of the Committee 
appointed to intjuire into ll'.e state of fcver in the metropolis. In moving 
that tiie report be printed, the honourable member said, "the medical 
institutions of tiiis ci'y were very defective. In all the Hospitals itwasthe 
practice to mix cuses of contagious fevers with common instances of in- 
<tisposilion, and the consei-]uence was, that not only patients, but nvn-ses 
and medical jiersons fell victims to this want of arrangement. And such 
was the deficiency of suppi}' of assistitnce for the sick and diseased 
]50()r, tliat at the principal hospitals foitv out of Jive cases were weekly 
refused." The committee recommended these circumstances, and the 
evidence contaiiicd in the Report, lo the consideration of his majesty's 
ministers. 

The Marquis of Lansdowne said, (June 26, 1819.) " Their lordships 
on enquiry would find that deaths hud occurred in lunatic cslabhsh- 
menls, and that it had been impossible for the magistr.ttes after the 
strictest investigations, to discover in what manner the unfortunate be- 
ings had been disposed of. These facts ottered strong grounds for their 
lordships adopting some system of regulation ; but another powerful 
reason in favour of the bill was the situation of pauper lunatics. These 
luifortunute persons were left too much at the mercy of parisboflicers. 
ket their lordships read the evidence of a noble lord, a member of the 
other House of Pai liament, he meant lord 11. Seymour, and they would 
be convinced of the necessity of a remedy for the great abuses in the 
management oi'iiu; in.-'ane poor. They were often kept in the work- 
houses till they became furious, and there were instances of their being 
bled until tiiey became, from weakness, more manageable." 

" An official return, printed by order of the House of Commons, pre- 
sents in one view an accurate representation of the state of crimes made 
f.upilal by the law, in the several years, from the j'ear 18U5 to the year 
1818, inclusive. From this it appears, that the total number of persons 
convicted of burglary in said interval, was 1874, of whom 199 wero- exe- 
cuted ; of larceny in dvveUing houses to the value of 40s. 1119, of whc.-n 
17 were executed ; of forgery 501, of whom 207 were executed ; horse 
htealing 852, of whom 35 were executed ; house breaking in the day 
time, and larceny, 761, of whom 17 were executed ; of murder 229, of 
whom 202 were executed -, robbery on the person, the higiiway, and 
other i)l;n-es, 848, of whom 118 were executed; sheep stealing 896, of 
whom 43 were executed; making, with various other ofiisnces of a ca- 
pital nature within said interval, a gross total of convicted, 8430, of 
whom 1045 were executed." (Bell's Weekly Messenger, March 29, 
1819.) 

Sir James Marintosli said, (March 3, 1819.) " The greatest change 
produced by the revolution of 1688, was what might be termed the 
establishment of a Parliamentary government. (Hear, hear.) Yet i 
u.ad been attended with one important inconvenience— the nnhappv 



J 



)4 NOTES. 

ART I. facility afforded to legislation; the ease uitli which every member ot 
^•-^f^^j Parliament could indulge his v liims and caprices; the little difficulty 
he found in obtaining measures to augment the number of capital felo- 
nies. [Hear.] An anecdote, confirmatory of this statement, was told 
by JMr. Burke, in the early part of his public career. Me was about to 
leave the house, when he was detained by a gentleman who w ished 
him to remain. jVIr. IJurke pleaded urgent business; and the reply of 
the individual who held him was, that the subject on which the house 
was engaged would very soon be dismissed, as it was ordy upon the 
subject of a capital felony, without benefit of clergy. [Laughter.'] Mr. 
Burke had afterwards stated, that he had no doubt that he could, with- 
out difficnlly, have obtained the assent of the house to any bill he 
brought in for capital punishment." 

" Mr. Bennet observed, (.lune 26, 1816,) that the abuse of the system 
of solit:iry confinement hat', exceeded any thing that coidd have been 
imagined. For the crime of vagrancy a ])erson had beensu!>ject to this 
terrible punishment for thirteen mouths, one fur seven months, and one 
for four months 

" Among the cases mentioned in the return was that of a man who had 
been kept in solitary confinement three months^ for destroying a phea- 
sant's egg! That Vvfas to say the miserable being who fell under the 
sentence was kept twenty-three hours out of twenty-four wiiliin four 
small walls, without any kind of employment, either entirely open to 
the air, or quite excluded from light ; and the crime for which this 
punishment was inflicted was tiie breaking of a plieasant's egg." 

"Mr. Western said, (April 2, 1819) that in looking at the returns 
already prepared for the years 1817 and 1818, it would appear that 
there were two thousand persons in each year, against wiiom either no 
bills were found, or who were not prosecuted, and two thousand six 
hundred wlio were acquitted. In the period which elapsed between 
July and the Lent assizes, many persons had been confined, who had 
remained in prison perhaps fourteen or fifteen months, before they had 
been tried — an enormous evil." 

" Mr. M. A. Tavlor asked, (.May 26, 1818,) did the house consider 
it fit and proper that this stale of tilings should continue ; that in four 
counties there should be but one assize in a year; and liiat prisoners 
should, notwithstanding all the exertions of magistrates, in disposing of 
minor offences, lie for so many months in confinement,, before they 
were brouglit to trial. A man, taken up on suspicion, and sent to the 
county gaol, must in such a case be ruined, however innocent of the 
crime imputed to him. We might boast as mucli as we pleased of oiu* 
superior laws, and practice of adminisiei'ing them, but there was no 
country in Europe where so monstrous a defect existed in the judiciary 
system — a defect equally injurious to individuals and disgraceful to the 
character of justice. A case of manslaughter had recently occuired, 
in which the prisoner was acquitted, after lying eleven months in con- 
finement ; the whole punisliment annexed by law to the conviction of 
that olfence being but twelve months' imprisonment. One man he had 
known indicted for stealing a game cock, who was closely confined for 
nine months; and when he was at length brought to trial, there was not 
a shadow of evidence to prove his guilt." 

"Mr. W. Smith said, (May 26, 1818,) that he had been informed by 
the town clerk of Norwich, that instances had occurred of jjersons 
being confined nine or ten months previously to their trial ; and a navy 
surgeon had been confined for tv.-elve months, and then acquitted'. By 
so long an imprisonment, individuals sometimes suffered more than 
they would have ilone, if convicted, from the sentence of the law." 

" Mr. Beimet said, (May 6, 181?,) that last year there was a wr.tched 
individual in the Fleet, who had been confined there, under an order 



NOTES., 5(' 

of the court of chancery, for contempt of court, for no less a lime than PART ' 
thirty-one years. T!ie name of that man was Thomas Williams, lie y.^^-v^ 
had visited iiim in Iiis wrtlched house of liondage, where lie found 
him sinking' under all the miseries that can afflict humanity ; and on tlie 
following day he died. 'I'here were at tiiis moment within the walls of 
the same prison, besides the petitioner, a woman who had been in con- 
finemeat twenty-eight years, and two others wliohad been there sesen- 
Icen years." 

" It was worthy of remark that eight hundred persons were committed 
to Clerkenwell prison, in one year, chiefly for assaults." 

Tile following is au authentic list of persons, who, in Oc'ober, 1817, 
were confined in the Fleet prison alo?ie, i'or contempt of court, no other 
charges oeing alleged against ihem : viz. Hannah IJaker, confined twen- 
ty-seven years; Charles Buhner, eighteen years; Ann Britner, ten 
years; llichard Bell, five years ; Matiliew Bland, five years ; Jere^iiah 
Board, three years ; Elizabeth Dawson, seven years ; David William, 
si.x years ; Mary Tiuch, three yeurs ; Samuel Mansell, four years ; John 
Melson, three years ; George Picked, fifteen years; Thomas Pale, 
three years ; Peter Itigb), four years ; I. Scribner, eight years; .lohu 
\Vutts, four years ; John Somax, seven years ; WiUiam Smith, eighteen 
ears. 

" Mr. Bennet said, (March 28, 1817,) that the situation of th.e pri- 
.-ons in Dublin was miserable in the e.\treme, and certainly it could not 
be too much lamented that any human being should be confined in 
them." 

" Mr. Peele entirely coincided in the opinion of the honourable gen- 
tleman, as to the miserable state of the prisons in Ireland, and should 
be happy to find that any measures could be taken, which would lead 
to the amelioration of the condition of the wretched inmates." 

"The Marquis of Lansdowne said, (June 3, 1818,) from the informa- 
tion contained in the report of the House of Commons on the state of 
the pri.sons of the kingdom, it appeared, tliat, in the course of ten 
years, such had been the progress of crimes, that they had increased 
to three timesjtheir former amount. It was not improbable that, out 
of the number annually consigned to the prisons, thirteen thousand w eve 
permitted to return to society, either by being acquitted, or after hav- 
ing undergone the sentence of imprisonment. In what a state of de- 
gradation must they, under their present system, return to the duties, 
or, he was afraid, rather to the vices of civilized men." 

"Mr. Buxton said, that from parliamentary documents it could be 
seen, that it was ten to one that an offender was not taken, fifty to one 
that he was not prosecuted, a hundred to one that he was not convicted, 
and more than a thousand to one that he was not executed." 

" Alderman Wood rose, (House of Commons, March 12, 1819.) He 
said, that the petition which he hud to present did not complain of the 
heavy burdens which the lord mayor and corporation had to bear, in 
supporting the various persons confined in the diifereni prisons of the 
metropohs, but of the crowded state of the gaols at the present mo- 
ment. They were so full, that it was totally impossible to attempt any 
.reformation in their inmates, by classifying them, according to the 
crimes of which they had been guilty. Newgate was filled to repletion 
with criminals under different sentences : there was now in it forty- 
seven individuals condemned to death, besides sixteen individu.ds for 
lesser offences, who had been .sent t.iere by th-^ mag'straies from the 
Clerkenwell sessions. Of these si.xteen he was sorry to oijscrve that 
fifteen were for abominable and infamous oft'ences, and that from want 
of space they had Ml been placed in rne room. This was an evil which 
aught, by all means, to be remedied. There was another, also, which 
he wished to press upon the attention of the house, Th-'r'^ was no 

V'oL. !.—3 S M 



NOTES. 

iiccominodalion, in any of the prisons, for state prisoners ; and li ^ 
f thought it rather hard that an individual of respectable rank and cha- 
racter should be compelled to herd with common felons, as he now was 
obliged to do, if committed by that house. Latterly, Newgate had been 
so crowded, that in the fifteen condemned cells they had been obliged 
to place the forty-seven men now under sentence of death, thus giving 
a proportion of more than three inmates to each cell ; which was much 
greater than it ougiit to be." 

" Men, who see their lives respected, and thought of value bj' others, 
come to respect that gift of God tiiemselves. Before he sat down, he 
begged leave to say a few words on a pul)lic spectacle, which had been 
made at Newgate, of a wretched man, who, being accused of murder, 
- had destroyed himself. It was stated in the newspapers of that day, 
that the mangled and bloody corpse had been e.xhibited in an elevated 
situation, with a small gallows erected over it, to which was appended 
the fatal instrument of destruction. Such a horrid exposition, he was 
persuatled, was calculated to produce the most mischievous conse- 
(|uences on the men, women, and cliildren by whom it was beheld." 
(Sir Samuel Homilly, ib, Feb. 25, 1818.) 

" Mr. Buxton said, (March 3, 1819,) with respect to the effect which 
an e.\ecution was supposed to have upon the minds of the criminals, he 
could assure the house that it was next to nothing ; and if any gentle- 
man would expose his feelings to the pain of seeing one of these 
dreadful exhibitions, the truth of his assertion would immediately ap- 
pear. 

" He believed there was not a single instance of an execution having 
taken place, without some robbery being committed at the same time, 
under the gallows. Indeed, it had been admitted by one of the light- 
fingered gang, that an execution was their harvest, as, while peo])ie's 
eyes were open above, their pockets were loose below. 

"Tliere was a fact within his recollection, which, if possible, would 
place the matter in a stronger light. A man was executed in this me- 
tropolis for selling forged bank notes: his body was given over to his 
family, and it was taken home. The first feeling would be that of com- 
passion towards his afHicted children, and a disconsolate widow ; but 
the house would be shocked to hear that this unhappy family and 
mourning friends were actually seized by the police officers in the act of 
selling forged notes, over the dead body. It was evident, therefore, 
that something ought to be done." 

"From the Report of tlie Committee of the House of Commons on 
the Police of the Metropolis, it appears that many thousands of boys 
are daily eng-iged in the commission of crime : that in one prison only 
(Clerkenwell,) where young and old are all mixed indiscriminately 
together, tliree hundred and ninety-nine boys, under twenty, were con 
fined for felonies in the last year ; of whom' was one of nine, two were 
often, seven of eleven, fourteen of twelve, and thirty-two of thirteeis 
years of age ! 

" Nor is it possible to pass over, in this inquiry, the dreadful state " 
our infant population, and the alarming increase oi' jitveniie deiingaei 
To no cause whatever can this be attributed to with so much certai 
as to the depraved and hardened disposition of the parents, the res 
of that habit of intoxication, which induces them either to abaiK 
their oifspring altogether, or, in order to supply the cravings of th 
depraved appetites, to incite them to, and instruct them in, every sj 
cies of theft and depredation. The extent to which this has been c 
ried, not only in the metropolis, but in some of the princii)al towns 
the kingdom, would be as incredible as it is disgraceful, were it i 
li'om its almost daily exposure in our judicial proceedings." 

Roscoe's Observatio7i3 on Pena[ Jurisprudence. 1S19 



NOTES. 



COURTS OF LAW ANEf CHANCERY. 

jmm, June 3d, 1818.] A nuiTibcr of the objections which 
.i.vi ueen made to tlic bill (t'of a comiTiiUee to inquire into the edu- 
cation of the .poor,) were grounded on tiie confidence whicli those 
wlio made them reposed in courts of hiw, as aRordini^ the means of 
correcting abuses. He confessed that he himself liad not any rehance 
pn courts of law in that respect, especially vvitii reference to expedi- 
tion and cheapness. He allowed those courts the possession of learn- 
ing without stint. He allowed them great copiousi\ess, great power 
of drawing out written argument. The faculty of caring nothing 
for the time and patience of suitors, and the hundreds of thousands 
of their clients' money they enjoyed in a perfection which the wild- 
est sallies of imagination could not go beyond. But as to expedition 
and cheapness, and attention to the comfort of those who were in- 
volved in the business of those courts, they were qualities by which 
vliey were certaiidy not distinguished' 

Xotwithstunding all the good qualities on the part of the noble 
and learned lord (Chancellor,) it was his (Mr, Brougham's) duty to say, 
that there was something in the court of chancery that set at defiance 
all calculations of cost and time, and rendered the celebrated irony of 
Swift, when he made Gulliver tell the worthy Hynynhmn, his master, 
(what he says, his honour found it hard to conceive,) that his father had 
been wholly ruined by the misfortune of having gained a chancery suit, 
witli full costs, not only not an exaggeration, but a strictl}^ coi-rect de- 
scription of the fact. 

Sir John Newport stated (June 2d, 1818,) "To show the enormous 
nature of the fees in the Court of Chancer}-, he might mention that in 
one case, the fees for docketing, enrolling, exemplifying, and register- 
ing a decree, amounted to upwards of 800i." 

The Marquis of Lansdowne observed (March 6lh. 1818,) "That no 
source of revenue operated to produce greater mischief to the poorer 
classes, than the stam.ps on law proceedings. The expense they occa- 
sioned was' an obstacle to the attainment of justice. 

" As to the present measure, he continued, it went merely to re- 
lieve unfortunate poor persons from paying tlie fees on pardons, which 
amounted on each to about 60/, and tlierefore it could operate in a very 
slight degree towards the reduction of the revenue." 

" The bill of the solicitor of the excise, in the prosecution of Weaver, 
for tiie offence of selling a ceriain drug to a brewer, amounted to nearly 
250/. In this case, there were five counsel employed for the Crown, 
and the penalty ultimately recovered from the delinquent was 200/" 

The following return has been laid before the House of Commons, of 
the amotuU of property locked up in the Court of Chancery in England; 
viz. in 179G, upwards of fourteen millions of pounds stt^rling; in 1806, 
upwards of twenty-one millions; in 1816, upwards of thirty-one mil- 
lions ; in 1818, upwards of thirty-three millions. 

Mr. Hume (March, 1818,) begged to call the attention of the House 
of Commons particularly to the police in India. Persons were frequently 
taken up, and months elapsed before any information was exhibited 
against them. In the interval, they were confined in crowded and un- 
healthy prisons, where death not unfrequently overtook them, or after 
enduring the aggravated misery of imprisonment, nothing whatever 
appeared against them, and they were liberated. The whole system of 
police at Bengal was conducted by a set of spies, who were generally 
composed of bands of robbers; these, when once discharged, were let 
loose to ravage the surrounding country. By a minute of the Bengal go- 
vernment, dated the 24th of November, 1810, it appeared that the pro- 



NOTES. 



,iT 1. fcbsioii ot" a spy, in India, look Its rise upon the onler issued in 17'92, ib; 

.^^-,^, the encuuragemcnt of liead money. Every police-office had its rt-i^ular 
and orgaiiizrd set of spies, wlio shared the reward or iirad money wi'li 
the chief of tlie decuits (a species of robhers.) Much hadheen said by :■ ■' 
lionourable member (sir W. lJurrougll^i) as to tlie economy observed m 
the appointment of legal men in India, afiecting- the administration c* 
justice. So fi*rnom tliere being any thing like economy in this respect, 
'the \vhv)le of Europe, put togetlier, was at less expense for law ofiicers 
than India alone — (H- ar.) The wiiole revenue of India was estimated 
at li.,OUJ,OvjO/. : liie charges of tlie law altogether were no less than 
1,7^5,000/. sterling, above one-eleventh of that revenue. 



BANKRUPTCY. 

"In Scotland," (said lord Archibald Hamilton, 1818,) "the burgh 
of Aberdeen had been declared bankrupt for 230,000/. sterling, attend- 
ed with extensive ruin. It had dissolved ip its rottenness." 

"Sir William Curtis remarked, (Feb. 24tl), 1818,) that rich men can 
go to the King's-bench prison, and drink their burgundy: They first 
rob their neighbours, and then get wliitevvaslied." 

" Up to the 1st of March, 1817, (said Mr. Waithman, Feb. 12th, 1819,) 
9000 persons were discharged under the debtors' insolvent act, whose 
united debts amounted to nine millions sterling ; whilst the property 
which they had given up to their ci-editors would not, on the average, 
pay a dividend of one half a farthing in the pound." 

" Sir S. Homilly observed, that every man conversant with the bank- 
rupt laws must know, that not a year passed without the occurrence of 
a great number of fraudulent bankruptcies." (lb. Feb. 25th, 1816.) 

Mr. Lockart rose (Feb. 17th, 1817,) according to notice, to move for 
the introduction of a bill to amend the baid^rupt laws. 

The evil of Which he complained was the multiplication of fraudu- 
lent bankruptcies to an extent which threatened the mogt frightful coiU 
sequences to the commerce and morals of the country. 

By late returns to Parliament it appeai-s, that the aggregate number of 
insolvent debtors discharged since tlie last return in 1815, up to 1st of 
February, 1819, was 13,291; the amount of their debts 9,506,837/. 16s. 
11^'/. ; and the amount of dividends but sixty thousand pounds. 

" Every one who heard him," said Mr. Bu.xton, (House of Commons, 
Marcli 3d, 1819,) "certainly must know how many fraudident circum- 
stances were connected -ivith almost alt the battkruptcies that nmv take 
place ; and after a more careful examination, it had been declared, on 
the highest authority, that of the bankruptcies which occurred, by far 
the greater number were of a fraudulent description." 



FINANCIAL MATTEll.-?. 

Mr. Baring said, (1817,) "there could be no doubt, m)Luitlistanding 
the delicacy which had been professed On the subject of touching the 
sinking fund, that to all practical purposes, it was comjiletely swept 
away." • • ' ^ 

Mr. Ricardo (June 10, 1819,) had already opposed the grant of three 
millions towards a sinking fund, because he did not wish to place such 
a ftmd at the mercy of ministers, who would take it whenever they 
thought urgent necessity required it. He did not mean to sav that it 



NOTES. 

•vou!d be belter witli one set of ministers lli;m aiiollier, for he looked 
upon it tbui all ministers would l)e anxiuiis, on cusosof what they con- , 
>;oived em-.-r.^enry, to appropriate it to tiie public use. He thought, 
'lierefore, the whole thiiijj a delusion upon the public, and on that ac- 
count he would never support a tax to maintain it. 

The evil of the national debt ought to be met. It was an evil wliich 
iihnost any sacrifice would not be too great to get rid of. It destroyed 
lie equilibrium of prices, occasioned many persons to emigrate to other 
countries, in order lo avoid the burden of taxation whith it entailed, and 
hung like a millstone round the exertion and industry of the country, 
lie therefore, never would give a vote in support of any tax which 
v.ent to continue a sinking fund; for if that fund were to amount to 
eight millions, ministers woidd on any emergency give the same account 
<^f it as tliey did at present. The delusion of it was seen long ago by 
ail those who w-erc acquainted with the subject; and it would have 
been but fair and sound policy to have exposed it long ago. 

Mr. Brougham said, (.fune 8, 1819,) "How stood the circumstances 
with respect vo this fund? In 1786, it amounted to one million, and an 
addition of 200,000/. was made soon after. In 1792, it was increased b" 
.so muc!) of each loan, as gave assurance that^t tiie end of 45 years sucii 
ioiin would be expimged by the gradiv»l operation of the sinking fund. 
This pledge contitiued to l}i02, when new arrangements were made by 
Lord Sidni.uith, that did not much postpone the tei'm of payment. The 
operation of 18l3, was to accelerate the liquidation of the debt, towards 
the close of tiie period jilcdged for that purpose, and the fiuid was then 
reduced to 15,000,000/. instead of 21,000.000/. to which it had accumu- 
lated. Tiie I'und holder was then told that j-epayment would go on at 
an accelerated rate from a certain term, and now came tlie plan by 
which all this was bid adieu to, and the -sinking fund -reduced to 
5,000,000/. Did not this place the public credit on a diflercnt footing? 
and was it not, to all intents and purposes, a breach of faith ? 

"Lord Holland stated, in a speech sometime since, that the royal fa- 
mily of England, tiiat is to say, the maintenance of the mere state of the 
crown, cost llie country o?ic millioii tijo laindred thonscmd powids ! or 
nearl) one-fourth of the whole assessed taxes of the kingdom." (Bell's 
Weekly Messenger, May 18, 1819.) 

" air. Tierney stated, (April 5, 1818,) that his majesty's privy purse 
amounted to sixty thousmd pounds. A privy purse of sixty thousand 
pounds^ in the present state of his majesty ! [Ilecir, Hear.] Out of this 
.sum he admitted that the allowance to the piiysicians had to be paid; 
bui; on the most liberal allowance lo them, this woidd not amotmt to 
eighteen tiiousand pounds a year, 'i'here was also received out of tlic 
dutchy of Lancaster ten thousand pounds. So lliat here was seventy 
thou.sand pounds that her majesty had, without there being a necessity 
of rendering an account for any ])art of it. With the deduction of an 
allowancfe lo the physicians, and a few pensions, this was a fund for ac- 
cumulation for ,sonie!)ody. Her majesty's establishment amounted to 
one luMulrcd thousand pounds a year. These two sums together made 
one hundred and seventy thousand pounds. But besides this, her ma- 
jesty was allowed for her Windsor establishment fifty-eight thousand 
pounds, and an additional allowance of one thousand pounds a year for 
%vhat was called travelling expenses; and the allowance for the two 
■ princesses was twenty-six thousand pounds, making tl»e total of the 
Windsor establishments amount to no less a sum than two hundred and 
sixty-four thousand pouiuls per .innum." [Hear, hear.'] 

"Mr. Rrougham considered, 1817,) tiiat the amount of the pen.sion 
list in 1SG9, a year wiien the four and a half per cent, fell exti'emely 
shoi-t, was two hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Upon that list 
were to be found the names of those who had rendered no service-. 



i\'0TE3. 

IT I. persons who belonged to families not more distinguished for their anti- 
.^-^^ quity and rank tlian for their wealth and splendour, and whose only 
title to their pensions, he presumed, was their invariable support of the 
ministers of the crown, whoever those ministers miglit be." 

"'J'he sinecure vacated by the death of the Earl of Buckingham 
shire had been worse than useless ; it had served as a screen to the 
most shocking abuses, and the most abominable frauds." (,Lord Lans- 
downc, May, iSlf^ ) 

"Sir II. Varneil said, (July 13, 1819,) in staling the increase of the 
civil list, it ought to have been stated to have increased from 900,000?. 
to 1,030,000/." 

" Mr. Calcraft expressed his obligations to the honourable baronet 
for bringing forward his resolutions, and trusted that he would not be 
deterred from future inquiries by the criticisms whicii every man who 
talked of economy was exposed to, from the bench opposite him. The 
main resolutions had .lot been grappled with by the riglit honourable 
gentleman (Mr Long,) that the revenue was collected at the enormous 
expense of 5,500,000/. He had shown that it was collected at lessi* 
This was the key to the; popularity and consequence of the present 
administration. So long as they had these 5,50TJ,000/. to distribute, so 
long would they iiear, froni ti'.ose who received it, ofilieir popularity." 

" The credit of the custom house tables (said Mr. Brougiiam, in his 
speed) of June 16, 1812.) would be but small, after the acfcoimt of 
them which appears in evidence. But the evidence sufficiently ex- 
plains en which side of the scale the error is likely to lie. There is, 
it would seem, a fellow feeling between the gentlemen at the custom 
house, and their honoured masters at the board of trade ; so that when 
the latter wish to make blazing statemeius of nutiona! prosperity, the 
i'ormer are ready to find the fact. 'i"he managing clerk of one of the 
greatest mercantile houses in the cily, tells you that he has known 
packages entered at 500/. which were not worth 50/. — that those sums 
urc entered at random, and cannot be at all relied upon. Other wit- 
nesses, particularly from Liverpool, confirm tiie same fact ; and 1 know, 
as does my right hon. fi'iend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who 
was present, that the head of the same respectable house, a few days 
ago mentioned at an official conference with him, an instance of his 
own clerks being desired at tlie Custom House, to make a double entry 
of an article for export. After such facts as these, I say it is in vain to 
talk of Custom House returns, even if they were contradicted in no re- 
spect by other evidence." 

The consumers of tea, said Mr. Ellice, (Jisne 18, 1819,) paid not only 
.3,500,000/. to government, but 2^000 OQO/. to the monopoly of the East 
India company. 

Civil Contingencies Bill — March 19, 1819 — 3191/. for expense of fur- 
niture for one room in the Royal Yatcht — 13,300/. expenses of grand 
duke Nicholas. 22,500/ for snuff boxes "to foreign ministers. 10,897/. 
for fees and presents to German Barons, &c. 

Mr. Tierney said, (1819,) tlr.it the amount of pensions for England 
and Scotland, independently of those founded on parliamentary grants, 
was 250,000/. 



LOOSE EXTRACTS FROM ENGLISH JOURNALS. 

•' After the bodies of the criminals, Chennel and Chalcraft, had been 
cut down, they were received into the waggon, which conveyed them 
to the place of ex^ulion, and extended on the elevated stage which 
and been constructed in the vehicle. The procession of officers, con- 



iMiTES, 

•itable. &c. was then re-formed, and the remains of the murderers wen 
conveyed in slow and awful silence lliroiigli the town of Godulming, un 
til they arrived at the house of the late .Mr. Cheniicl. Here the pro 
cession halted, and the bodies of Cliennel and Ciiatcmft were removei 
from tlie waggoiylnto the kitchen of the hotise, one of tliem beinf 
placed on the very spot where the housekeeper, Elizabeth AVilson, wa: 
found murdered. After tiiis the surgeon proceeded to perform the 
Hrst offices of dissection, and the bodies in tiiis state were left to the 
gaze of thousands, who tiiroughout the day eagerly rushed in to view 
them. (Bell's Weekly Mes.senger, 1818.) 

" The coiuitry assizes," said tlie London Courier of April 4, 1817 — 
" now just terminated, have presenl-cd a list of criminals quite unparal- 
leled for magnitude in the history of this coimtry. At no former pe- 
riod have they amounted to more 'ban a fourth or a third part of their 
present number. From Jifteeii tojlfti/ capital coyivictions have taken place 
in almost every county. At Ltnr.tister Aotizes J'orty-ux pei^sons received 
sentence of death. In October vi^.i it was proved in a court of law, that 
a club of conspirators (linlteis) at Manchester, perjured themselves by 
wholesale, to the amount of one hundred and thirty at a time ; and now it 
is just proved that a kn^il of assassins can be as easily, hired in England, 
as in Italj. Tiiree hundred of Messrs. Bodin's workmen, at Loughbo- 
rough, having conspired against their employers about wages, subscrib- 
ed a fund, and hired, at five pounds each man, a squad of assassins well 
skilh d in the art of liouse burning, and murder, who destroyed their 
master's premises in revenge." 

Hevolt in iVinchester College. — " We are happy to state, that tranquil- 
lity has been restored at Winchester College, that the business of die 
school has oeen resumed with order, and that the young gentlemen 
have since shown perfect resignation to the will of their nble teachers. 
About ten of the gentlemen commoners have been allowed to resign. 
There were only six (out of 23^) who did not join in the revolt, the 
two senior and four other college prefects. (Bell's Weekly Messen- 
ger, May 18, 1818) 

" We are happy to announce that prosecutions have been brought 
against a number of grocers for the manufacture and sale of a perni- 
cious substitute for tea, composed of tlie leaves of the black and wliite 
thorn, boiled, dried on copper plates, and coloured with logwood, ver- 
digrease, and Dutcli pink. The fitcls were proved at great length, and 
verdicts found in the Court of Exchequer, on Saturday, against no fewer 
than ten de-.ders in the metropolis, for this frauil. Several of them sub- 
mitted to conviction without resistance, and thus the important fact is 
established, tiiat this deleterious mixture is imposed on the fair trader. 

There ar*- other :irticles of human con.sumption, eqtially e.NLposed to 
similar friuds. Porter and ale, it has frequently been proved, have 
been mixed with drugs of the most pernicious quality. Port wine, as 
it IS called, and especially that sold at very low prices, it is known, has 
been manufactured from sloe juice, British brandy, and logwood. Gin, 
in order that it may have the grip, or iiave l\\t appearance of being par- 
ticularly strong, is known to be adulterated with m decoction of long 
pepper, or a small quantiiy of aquafortis. Bread, from public convic- 
tions, is known to have o -.on made of a mixuu\. of flour, grmnd stone, 
chalk, and pulverized b.-.ues. Milk to have been adulterated with 
whitening and water. Sug...r to have been mixed with sand. Pepper 
with fuller's earth and other earths. Mustard, with cheap pM"gent 
seeds. Tobacco, with various common British he.rb«. There is ^ arce 
an article of ordinary consumption, which is not rendered de.structu c 'ly 
the^nfamoiis and fraudulent practices of interested persons. (Bell's 
Weekly IVfe^enger, May 13, 1818.) 

" The practice of advil'erating flotir, with bones be'comes more eom- 



tliesefew veaiF-tVoni ten per.ce a busliel. to tig'.iteen pence to theEfs 
purchi'Scrs. The coi?eclion oi" bones, is, in' fact, pursued as a regulai- 
trade in the metiopoiis. Fine pulverized clay, is a'si) mixed with Xl: 
prime necessary of lite.■'.(Litcr;l^^ Panoruma, July iy, 1819.) 

"1'he contraband trade ot G}-e<it ih-itain is cstini.Ucd at about fifteen 
millions sterling a year, by which the revenue is annually defrauded of 
about two millions." 

"December 1,1818. Lord lianclagh indicted, convicted and fined 
fifty pounds for extorting money (for the use of his servants) from three 
young men who took shelter on his grounds on the banks of the Thames 
ina thunder storm." 

''Dec. 3, 1818. A British naval officer connected with the dock yanl 
at Chatham, is condemned (at St. Omir's) to five years labour in chains, 
for uttering forged bank of England notes in tlie neighbourhood of St. 
Omer, Dunkirk and Calais." 

" Feb. 26, 1819. Bartholomew Droughlon, an officer in His JSlajesiv's 
navy, was brought before Mr. Alderman Cox, as sitting alderman, 
charged with felony in stealing bank notes and other i)roperty at the 
White Horse, Fetter Lane, and the Swan with two necks, Lads Lane, 
where he had at different times slept." 

" Old Bailej'. 26th Feb. 1819. Kdward Ijawrence Coleman, late purser 
ill His xMajesty''s nax<y, was convicted on an indictinent for embezzling 
his employers' money — Mess. Lewis and Company, Oxenden street." 

" March IS, 1819. A naval court martial was held a few days ago 
on board His Maiesly'sship Northumberland, at Chatham, for the trial 
of capt. W. E. Wright, of the navy, for smuggling. He was convicted, 
and sentenced to be dismissed the service." 

(The foregoing cases, it will be observed, occurred within a f«« 
months of each other, lliey are collected by a casual reader, and are 
probably not all, of the same nature, that took place during the same 
time.) 

" June, 1819. The Earl of Morton having lately occasion to call on 
Mr. Geo. Moncrieff, manager of the Union Canal Company in Edin- 
burgli, gave him the tie. A boxing match ensued, and blue eyes and 
bloody noses were the results on both sides. Lord Morton was high 
commissioner of th>;; geiieral assembly which sat only a few weeks ago." 

" Dec. 1818. It is a fact that Chief Justice Abbott, (the Lord Chief 
JuFti'je of England,") lately threatened to adjourn the court of King's 
bevich, because tallow cimdlcs iiad been produced, instead of wax 
Sights." 

'•It is aijo a fact, that -the late Justice Gould, when en the circuit, 
once threatened to remove the Essex Assizes from Chelmsford to Col- 
chester, because no good smali beer could be found in the former lowri." 

" In a debate which look place in the lio'ise of Commons, April 
1819, on the circumstances attending the arrest of general Gourgan 
i-\v George Cockbuin threw out an accusation, whiUt speukiiig in hi 
i'iacr, ag;iinst Gourg;ind, by relating what he had heard from him at S! 
Helena, in the hasty and unguarded vwments of private conversation " 1 
general," said sir Geortre Cockburn, "staled to me that he had grd 
reason to complain of that scoundrel Bertrand, for so these per.s " 
••vcre in the habit of speaking of each other." 




II ^ r\ ^ 124^D' 



ERRATA. 



'*.gc 43, for 1668, read 1688, 

— 76, for 1668, read 1688 

— 209, for " five thousand five hundred,'* read sixteen hundred 

and ten. 



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